Manning Marable: A Brother, a Mentor, a Great Mind

The Root Michael Eric Dyson recalls the pioneering scholar as a 20th-century Frederick Douglass who nurtured and inspired talented young academics. By: Michael Eric Dyson Posted: April 2, 2011 at 12:36 AM I discovered Manning Marable as a 21-year-old freshman at Knoxville College, a historically black college I'd left my native Detroit to attend after working in factories and fathering a son during the time most college-bound kids are in school. I was in the library stacks, browsing the sociology section, when I came upon a book that grabbed my attention: From the Grassroots: Social and Political Essays Towards Afro-American Liberation. It was clear that Marable's left politics reflected how he had baptized classic European social theory in the black experience. "Wow," I said to myself. "If Karl Marx was a brother, this is how he'd write and think." Full Story: http://www.theroot.com/views/remembering-manning-marable