Remembering Manning Marable

North Star Fund has  lost a wise advisor, friend and contributor.  Advisory Board member Dr. Manning Marable passed away on Friday, April 1, 2011.

Dr. Marable was a Professor of African American Studies at Columbia University, where he also served as the founding director of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies and the director of the Center for Contemporary Black History. He was a prolific writer. His work included several books, a weekly column, and numerous journal articles. His long anticipated biography, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, was published on Monday, April 4, 2011.  It has quickly sparked a vigorous public debate about this seminal activist and leader, our government's surveillance activities, and the struggle for racial and social justice.

Manning Marable has a long association with North Star Fund. Sister North Star Fund Advisory Board member Barbara Winslow remembers him as an essential leader of the organization. "I got involved with North Star Fund in 1984. From the beginning, I remember Manning as someone you could count on."

He was a major speaker at North Star Fund's 1993 conference, "Organizing for Social Change: Fighting Racism and The Politics of Division." In 1997, the foundation awarded him the North Star Fund Frederick Douglass Award. According to Winslow, "We gave him the North Star Frederick Douglass Award because of everything he was and everything he did. He was a tireless activist and a brilliant public intellectual."

North Star Fund's Executive Director Hugh Hogan added that, "We rely on our Advisory Board members to ground us in the history of the struggle against injustice, racism, and the lack of opportunity. We rely on them for guidance on what could be: a broad based, authentic grassroots democracy, a just and sustainable economic system and a world free from the pressure to dominate or subjugate others. Above all we rely on them for inspiration, because this is not easy work. Dr. Marable was that wise, inspiring kind of person who leaves the world richer for his fearless willingness to expose the painful truths about society, its contradictions and its possibilities. And he leaves it poorer because he will not be here to lead the debate that has already begun following this week's publication of his magnum opus.  He will be greatly missed, and our community of philanthropic and grassroots activists send our heartfelt condolences to his spouse Leith, and the rest of his family, friends and colleagues."

Manning Marable will be remembered at a memorial service at Riverside Church on May 26, 2011 at 5:30.