Manning Marable 1950- 2011, A Radical Intellectual – A DSA Founder

In Celebration  of Black History Month. 
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Manning Marable was a prolific  African American  scholar,  academic, writer and political organizer who made significant contributions to  building   the U.S. left and  Black left   from 1980 until his passing in 2011. He was the founding director of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies and the Center for the Study of Contemporary Black History at Columbia University.  
Manning’s first book, How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America (1983 & 2015), along with Race, Reform and Rebellion- The Second Reconstruction and Beyond in Black America, 1945-2006, ( 1983 & 2007), provide crucial political and social history of African American struggles while developing a Marxist tradition of scholarship and activism Let Nobody Turn Us Around (2000 and 2005 co-edited with Leith Mullings), which traced the history of “transformational” (left) politics in black political writing from the time of slavery to the present, became one of the most widely used textbooks in black studies.   He wrote or edited more than twenty-two books throughout his extraordinary career. His final book, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, 2011,  a carefully researched, critical study of an extraordinary, political leader, was awarded  the Pulitzer Prize.  Marable’s scholarship and publications were superb and widely recognized within academia,  and were read by activists throughout the world
 
In 1983, Dr. Marable was a professor of economics and history and the director of the Race Relations Institute at Fisk University. He went on to direct  the Africana and Latin American Studies program at Colgate University, and then  chaired the Department of Black Studies at Ohio State University. Marable also taught at the University of Colorado at Boulder. In 1994, he joined the faculty at Colombia University, where he established the Institute for Research in African American Studies. During the 10 years he directed the Institute, he molded it to be not only a center of critical scholarship, but also to produce initiatives and work that was useful and accessible to the black community. He was also the founding editor of Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society, where many currently well-known black scholars published their early work. He completed his academic career as a professor of public affairs, political science, history and political science at Columbia University where he directed the university’s Center for Contemporary Black History. until his death in 2011.   In these programs Dr. Marable created pathways for graduate study for generations of  African American  scholars that are now  teaching  in universities throughout the nation. 
 
In addition to his academic career, Manning was extraordinary for his lifelong commitment to his role as a  public intellectual  making his scholarship accessible to all.  Beginning in 1976,  his nationally syndicated column “Along the Color Line, “ was distributed  free of charge to more than  100 newspapers and journals in the United States, the Caribbean, Africa and India.  
 
Democratic Socialists of America
Dr. Marable played a significant role in creating left organizations and promoting  left unity in the U.S.  He was particularly interested in  bringing a Marxist analysis to the project of creating a left built upon pursuing racial and gender justice. He was a leader in NAM ( New America Movement) and the National Black Independent Political Party  and helped to negotiate the merger of NAM and DSOC (the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee)  in 1980-1982.    The new organization became DSA. With  his participation, the negotiated  points of unity between NAM and DSOC were carefully drafted to reflect the strengths of each organization including the vision of creating a multiracial, feminist inspired, left- a major step forward for this time.   
In the summer of 1983 Manning  organized a conference of Third World Socialists (people of color ) at Fisk University, bringing together a diverse group of  left academics and activists.  At this conference DSA created new commissions each  focused on self-determination: a Latino Commission, an African American Commission and an Anti-Racism Commission within DSA.  These commissions went on to  support  the Jesse Jackson run for President in 1984,  and then convinced the  DSA itself  to support  the Jackson effort in 1988. 
    One of Manning’s many   contributions to DSA  was to develop a new journal, Third World Socialist,  that brought together a  widely diverse group of activists and scholars of color.  In addition to writing  columns in the African American press with the by- line Along the Color Line, he spoke at hundreds of college campuses promoting a multi -racial democratic socialist perspective among faculty and students.       
            Dr. Marable was both a Vice Chair of DSA  and a member of the National Executive Committee ( later the National Political Committee)  where he provided a strong  Black voice for supporting the efforts of socialists in Third World struggles and for  attracting a significantly multiracial membership to  DSA. 
             As a result of his frustration that DSA’s anti-racists work did not grow significantly over time, Manning shifted some of his political activism to the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism in 1995. Nevertheless, he remained a strong supporter of anti-racism efforts within DSA and was a frequent speaker at DSA Youth Section conferences.
 
Committee of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism      

   On December 6-8, 1991,  some 900 plus members left the Communist Party and  formed the Committees of Correspondence. The new  Black led C of C  was dedicated to” renewing the struggle for social progress and socialism, and putting an end to what they saw as the undemocratic practices  that damaged  the Marxists and Communist movement.” 1
Manning Marable joined  the new CofC and made enormous contributions to the building for the new  CoC’s national conference in July 1992 which brought together 1,300 diverse left individuals and organizations.  He and others drafted the declaration of principles of the Committees of Correspondence – “Where We Stand”-- for the founding conference, reflecting the need to seek the broadest possible unity to achieve immediate goals. 
    Manning Marble was elected as one of the five co-Chairs and he served on the National Coordinating Committee.  Within the CoC he  guided the development of the People of Color committee and provided political guidance on left unity and anti-racism. Manning  Marable enthusiastically undertook the organizational tasks of building a new organization (e.g. CoC), but always held firm to the idea  of left unity and multi-racial action – that  the unity of left forces was essential for building independent progressive political forms.  (In 2000, the CofC  changed the name to the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism.)
 
The Black Radical Congress

 In 1995 Manning,  along with 4 other prominent Black activists Barbara Ransby, Abdul Alkalimat, Bill Fletcher, and  Leith Mullings, each from diverse political backgrounds   met to plan a response to the deterioration of the lives of Black people in the nation and around the world.     They were soon joined by some 35 prominent Black activists from diverse left organizations—socialist, communist, radical feminism, revolutionary nationalism  from around the country to organize what became the Black Radical Congress. 
  They had not initially planned   to form a new political organization but instead find ways to encourage coalition building and joint activities among existing groups. 

   However at the first conference,  in June  1998, with over 3,000 in attendance, the  energy and enthusiasm of  assembled group convinced them to form a united front of Black progressive politics--a network   that self-identified as anti-capitalist and rejected the class reductionism among the white left and the growing patriarchal trend in Black U.S. politics.
The National Council of the BRC adopted a mission statement on 26 September 1999 in East St. Louis, Illinois.

The opening paragraph states:
The purpose of the Black Radical Congress (BRC) is to promote dialogue among African American activists and scholars on the left; to discuss critical issues on the national and international scene that pertain to the Black community; to explore new strategies and directions for progressive political, social and cultural movements; and to renew the Black radical movement through increased unified action.[4]
 
The BRC formed local chapters that worked on a range of issues including police brutality, incarceration, public education, labor rights and gender justice, promoting  a Black left with the critical inclusion of Black feminist  positions  within the Black community , Black scholarship, and Black politics until 2008. 
Several members attended the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, and Xenophobia sponsored by the United Nations and held in Durban South Africa in 2001. This conference, and the follow up reports from the conference highlighted the long tradition of including an internationalist perspective within the movements of the Black Left. 
The struggle of  Marable and the BRC  attempted to address  the longstanding  tendency in much of the left-leaning social movements and  scholarly literature to view black social movements with ambivalence, dismissing them as “identity politics” that compare unfavorably to social movements  explicitly calling for revolutionary change.3
Noting that the black freedom struggle has always contested both race and class inequality,   scholar and co-founder of the BRC  Leith Mullings notes,
“If progressive forces are to move forward in the United States, it is essential that they deal honestly with the role of racism and recognize the coproduction of racism and capitalism rather than dismissing anti-racist struggles
as “identity politics.” 3.

 Marable’s work and that of the others in the BRC:,  as well as the National Rainbow Coalition; the successful electoral campaigns of Harold Washington for Chicago’s mayor in 1983 and 1987  and the tens of thousands of community-based organizations produced many activists  connections  to the  exciting explosive growth of the  current broad based Movement for Black Lives.

Notes. 

1. “Upheaval in the CPUSA: Death or Rebirth ?,  Max Elbaum,  Crossroads. January 1992, No.17. 
2.  "Mission Statement of the Black Radical Congress (BRC) Archived February 2, 2007, at the Wayback Machine", accessed 2 January 2007

  3.  Leith Mullings, “Neoliberal Racism and the Movement for Black Lives in the United States.”, Chapter 8.
Black and Indigenous Resistance in the Americas : From Multiculturalism to Racist Backlash, edited by Juliet Hooker,
Lexington Books, 2020. 

This tribute by: 

Duane Campbell, retired professor Bilingual/Multicultural Education, California State University -Sacramento  former chair of Anti Racism Commission of DSA (1983-2004)  and currently a co-chair of DSA’s Immigrants’ Rights Working Group,
Carl Pinkston. Operation Director of Black Parallel School Board (Sacramento) and  former member of Liberation Road and Institute for Social and Economic Studies.

This tribute written for the forthcoming, ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE AMERICAN LEFT,
 
 

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