Living Black History: How Reimagining the African-American Past Can Remake America's Racial Future [Hardcover]

Manning Marable (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 3, 2006

Are the stars of the Civil Rights firmament yesterday’s news? In Living Black History scholar and activist Manning Marable offers a resounding “No!” with a fresh and personal look at the enduring legacy of such well-known figures as Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., Medgar Evers and W.E.B. Du Bois. Marable creates a “living history” that brings the past alive for a generation he sees as having historical amnesia. His activist passion and scholarly memory bring immediacy to the tribulations and triumphs of yesterday and reveal that history is something that happens everyday. Living Black History dismisses the detachment of the codified version of American history that we all grew up with. Marable’s holistic understanding of history counts the story of the slave as much as that of the master; he highlights the flesh-and-blood courage of those figures who have been robbed of their visceral humanity as members of the historical cannon. As people comprehend this dynamic portrayal of history they will begin to understand that each day we-the average citizen-are “makers” of our own American history. Living Black History will empower readers with knowledge of their collective past and a greater understanding of their part in forming our future.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this sharp, savvy collection, several pieces of which began as W.E.B. Du Bois lectures at Harvard in 2004, Columbia University scholar Marable (The Autobiography of Medgar Evers) declares that "being true to black history... means accepting and interpreting its totality." Living black history, Marable posits, requires "reconstruct[ing] America's memory about itself" through projects that give voice to the voiceless. Marable takes a historian's pleasure in reproaching those (like Kweisi Mfume and Henry Louis Gates Jr.) who discount Du Bois's commitment to radicalism. He similarly admonishes those, from the black middle class or hip-hop "Malcolmologists," who seize on Malcolm X's resistance without recognizing—as Marable does in dissecting Alex Haley's unreliable Autobiography and criticizing the Shabazz family—Malcolm X's unquenched, pan-Africanist voice. An essay on lawyer Robert Carter, who helped win Brown v. Board of Education, prompts the author's reflection on gains blacks have made in access to educational institutions, and also his lament that Brown has not helped the working class or the poor. But Marable offers no targeted solution for African-American uplift. Rather, given his socialist leanings—less articulated here than in other works—he supports cross-racial and class-based efforts to fight structural racism. (Jan.)
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From Booklist

Lamenting the absence of detailed histories of pivotal African American figures, or analyses that are too superficial and propagandistic, Marable offers a probing look at several historical figures and the civil-rights movement. In his critique of W. E. B. DuBois, Marable exposes much of the myth and conflict between DuBois and Booker T. Washington and exposes them both to be more complex and engaged than most works reveal. Regarding Malcolm X, Marable suggests that Alex Haley's biography and Spike Lee's film are most significant for their slants and omissions. Conflicts surrounding the estate of Malcolm X and the availability of raw material to scholars have further complicated the quest to understand the iconic black leader. Marable's final chapter explores the promise of integrated education of the Brown decision and the reality of hypersegregation that continues to estrange low-income minorities from the American mainstream. Still, Marable hopes that a new civil-rights movement will achieve the promise of Brown by transcending the limitations of popular myth and historical distortions. Vernon Ford
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 16 and up
  
• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Basic Civitas Books (January 3, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465043895
• ISBN-13: 978-0465043897
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,089,039 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1.0 out of 5 stars LIVING BLACK HISTORY (NOT), December 26, 2011

By 

Roland G. Sheppard - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Living Black History: How Reimagining the African-American Past Can Remake America's Racial Future (Paperback)

Living Black History How Re-Imagining the African-American Past Can Remake America's Racial Future, was written by Manning Marable, who is one of America's most influential and widely read scholars. He is Professor of History and Political Science and Public Affairs at Columbia University, and founding Director of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies. His latest books include "The Great Wells of Democracy: The Meaning of Race in American Life" and "Freedom on My Mind: The Columbia Documentary History of the African American Experience." Marable also has a long history as a political activist in Black and reform-oriented socialist organizations. He has been a member of the New American Movement, a member of the executive committee of the National Black Political Assembly, an associate of the journal Socialist Review, national vice-chairperson of the Democratic Socialists of America, a leader of the National Black Independent Political Party, and finally, co-chair of the Committees of Correspondence.
Manning Marble's new book, is supposed to be about "How Reimagining the African-American Past Can Remake America's Racial Future."
In the book's preface, Marable states "Too often the study of history is an exercise in nostalgia or political myth-making rather than an honest interaction with the raw materials of the past" (p. xiv). His aim is to provide a corrective by treating African-American history both honestly and critically.
Unfortunately the book fails to live up to his goals.
Marable, to his credit, does point out the exceptional contributions of W.E.B. Dubois and C.L.R. James to Black history and thought. He goes into depth about the significance of the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision. But he fails to point out the studies by the Harvard Civil Rights Project that the public schools have become resegregated (separate and unequal) as the consequence of bipartisan political action, by both the Democrats and Republicans, during the decade from 1988 to 1998.
He points out the decline of affirmative action and even quotes President Clinton "who in his re-election campaign of 1996 declared that he had 'done more to eliminate affirmative action programs I didn't think were fair and tighten others up than my predecessors have since affirmative action has been around.'"
But he does not state the history of the Black Democrats like Jesse Jackson who opposed the implementation of affirmative action quotas in the 1980s, helping to make affirmative action more difficult. From my own experience, as a former union official, the only way to effectively enforce affirmative action is when there are affirmative action quotas for employment in the workplace.
When reading non-fiction, I always try to find an answer as to why the author wrote it. I was particularly perplexed by the book's style of unsubstantiated pontifications, and self-adulation. (Which were very boring to this reader.)
When he describes the gentrification of Harlem by Columbia University, he neglects to mention that it is one of the largest landlords in New York City. He describes his own role in making a memorial of the Audubon Ball Room, the hall in which Malcolm X was assassinated.
He then says that Columbia by agreeing to the Malcolm X Memorial site and "Malcolm X scholarships" for minorities enrolled in its medical school, made the deal that "didn't silence the critics, but it effectively ended popular resistance to Columbia's gentrification plans. "
He goes on to explain Malcolm X's "family's interest in isolating Malcolm X from both his black nationalist phase and from his later connection with revolutionary socialism, along with Columbia's interest in burying the burden of its local history of public relations blunders and predatory behavior in Harlem, made an honest reckoning with the past impossible. Still, the greatest casualty in this process of accumulation by dispossession is Malcolm X, who is presently being 'dispossessed' of the actual content of his words, ideas, and actual history. What has been preserved at the Audubon Memorial Center still remains largely an intellectually empty space, without meaningful political content or analysis. Malcolm's mesmerizing visage as displayed in a life-sized statue diverts us from pursuing hard questions about his relevance to contemporary struggles being waged about racism and power-questions that he himself would have asked. The contestation over the meaning of Malcolm X's life, and the cooptation of his historic legacy, began almost immediately after his assassination."
I agree with the attempt to co-opt Malcolm X after his assassination. In my essay on the Assassinations Martin Luther King of and Malcolm X I wrote:
"A second assassination of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. has been the attempt to distort what they really stood for in their last years of life. This is a process that Lenin described in the opening to his book The State and Revolution:
'...what in the course of history, has happened repeatedly to the theories of revolutionary thinkers and leaders of oppressed classes fighting for emancipation. During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a certain extent for the consolation of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it.'
[...]
As one who was politically active at that time, I believe that it is important to tell the truth about Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X in order to help keep their ideas alive and prevent them from being reduced to harmless icons.
One of Marabele's credentials is that he is co-chair of the Committees of Correspondence. A grouplet that was formed by members of the Communist Party (USA) after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989. While preaching against the vulgarization of history, he takes a page from the Stalinist School of the Falsification and repeats the slander that Trotskyists are anti-communist and were therefore opposed to W.E.B. Dubois writings!
What the Trotskyists did oppose was the policy of subordinating the struggle in this country to the needs of the Soviet Union. Especially during World War II, when the Communist Party USA told black people to subordinate their struggle for equality to the needs of the war movement.
To give an example, at the "Liberty Ship" Marine Shipyards, in Sausalito, black workers paid full dues to the union, but were not allowed to become full union members. The Communist Party told these workers, who were threatening to strike, not to fight this injustice, but to wait till after the war. (The shipyard closed up after the war.) They supported the internment of the Japanese during the war, and their west coast paper, The Peoples World, was among the first companies to fire its Japanese workers! They even went so far as to call John L. Lewis a fascist, when he opposed the wage freeze imposed during the war!
At the time of the emergence of Malcolm X the Communist Party considered Malcolm to be a 'Black Fascist". But Marable praises Herbert Apthecker, a long-time Communist Party leader and prominent historian who wrote, Afro-American History-The Modern Era in 1971. A book which was purported to cover all of the major modern Black leaders up to Martin Luther King and Huey P. Newton. But out of 324 pages, there is not one word, not one whisper of Malcolm X!
Marable then goes on to charge that the Troskyists, who were the only organization that defended Malcolm X while he was alive, distorted what Malcolm X said during the last years of his life!
On page 163 he states: "Texts of the actual transcripts of the majority of his speeches went unpublished for decades and many still remain unpublished. The major edited collections of Malcolm X's speeches, including Malcolm X Speaks and By Any Means Necessary, were published by Pathfinder Press and Merit Publications, which are affiliated with the Trotskyist Socialists Workers Party (SWP). The SWP, following the Marxist theories of Leon Trotsky, believed (As did C.L.R. James - R.S.) that the "revolutionary black nationalism" of militants like Malcolm X was a necessary precursor to the staging of a socialist revolution in the United States. The Trotskyists went out of their way to court and promote Malcolm X after his break from the Nation of Islam, and in many respects interpreted his ideals and goals as part of an "evolution" toward a revolutionary Marxist position."
This statement by Marable is an outright lie! For example, in his May 29, 1964 speech, "Harlem `Hate Gang' Scare", given at the Militant Labor Forum in New York City, Malcolm X stated:

. . . . "It's impossible for a chicken to produce a duck egg... The system in this country cannot produce freedom for an Afro-American. It is impossible for this system, this economic system, this political system, period . . . . And if ever a chicken did produce a duck egg, I'm certain you would say it was certainly a revolutionary chicken." He then made the very same remarks in his February 16, 1965 speech, "Not Just An American Problem", which can be found at:
http://panafricannews.blogspot.com/2007/11/malcolm-x-40-years-then-and-now.html)
When I became a member of the SWP in 1961, contrary to Marable's assertions, I was encouraged to read the works of W.E.B. Dubois and also the writings of C.L.R. James and James's contributions to the... Read more ›

3 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Is this even Scholarship?, September 15, 2007

By 

Peter Baker (Tampa, Florida) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Living Black History: How Reimagining the African-American Past Can Remake America's Racial Future (Hardcover)

I respect what Professor Marable is trying to say in his book, however, it isn't articulated well enough. What stands out in my mind is that (especially with regard to the Malcolm X chapter) the 'scholarly pursuit' found within is more deductive and assuming than anything. Aside from that, to look at the sources in the bibliography, is like wading through a mire and it makes clarifying his research more difficult (there aren't even proper footnotes). This could have been better. But it's worth reading.

0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars DISPLACED AFRICANS IN THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE, June 7, 2007

By 

F. I. Khattab "F. I." - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Living Black History: How Reimagining the African-American Past Can Remake America's Racial Future (Hardcover)

ANY BOOK BY DR. MANNING MIRABEL IS WORTH ITS WEIGHT IN SALT AND INTELLECTUAL PERSUIT.