AMES, Iowa -- Manning Marable, a Columbia University professor, black history scholar and human rights activist, will present the keynote speech for Iowa State University's Martin Luther King Jr. celebration. His speech, "Diversity and Democracy in America," will be at 8 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 27, in the Memorial Union Sun Room. It is free and open to the public.
Marable is professor of public affairs, political science and history at Columbia. He is the founding director of the Center for Contemporary Black History and the Institute for Research in African-American Studies, one of the nation's most highly regarded centers of scholarship on the black American experience.
A prolific writer, Marable has written nearly 200 articles in academic journals. He is the author and/or editor of 21 books and scholarly anthologies on black politics, and the role of race and class in history. These include "Living Black History: How Reimagining the African-American Past Can Remake America's Racial Future," "The Autobiography of Medgar Evers: A Hero's Life and Legacy Revealed Through His Writings, Letters, and Speeches" (co-editor with Myrlie Evers Williams), "The New Black Renaissance," and "W.E.B. Du Bois, Black Radical Democrat."
Marable is a national leader in the development of web-based, educational resources on the African American experience. With Columbia's Center for New Media Teaching and Learning, he directed the production of courses on Du Bois and Malcolm X, a multimedia version of Du Bois' "The Souls of Black Folk," and a massive multimedia version of "The Autobiography of Malcolm X."
Since 1976, Marable has written a political commentary series, "Along the Color Line," that appears in more than 400 newspapers and journals worldwide. In addition, Marable is a consultant to the National Endowment for the Humanities and an adviser to the Congressional Black Caucus. He donates much of his time fund raising and speaking on behalf of prisoners' rights, labor, civil rights, faith-based institutions and other social justice organizations.
Marable earned his bachelor's degree from Earlham College, Richmond, Ind., in 1971; his master's degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1972; and his doctoral degree in American history from the University of Maryland in 1976. He has been on Columbia's faculty since 1993.
Marable's talk is cosponsored by the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics; the Center for American Intercultural Studies; the colleges of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Engineering, and Human Sciences; Dean of Students Office; College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Miller Lecture Fund; MLK Celebration planning committee; Margaret Sloss Women's Center; Multicultural Student Affairs; Office of the President; Office of the Provost; Student Union Board; the YWCA Ames-ISU; and the Committee on Lectures, which is funded by the Government of the Student Body.
