The fundamental issue in American history has been the issue of race. MARABLE: No, it doesn't surprise me as a historian in the least bit. GORDON: Does it astound you that we are still grappling, fumbling, tripping over the issue of race and class in this country? You have been writing of late about class and race based on what has occurred with the Gulf region over the course of the last few months. GORDON: (Technical difficulties) me ask you this. And what they may have is a useless piece of tape. I've encountered people with audiotapes that are 50 years old, clutching them, saying, `I have this important speech of Malcolm X's,' and I remind them that an audiotape, based on magnetic tape technology, last about 40 or 45 years. But many people have been extremely reluctant to let go of that material and place it in an archive.Īnd ironically, because of their love for him, they have helped to destroy him. But one of the things that's interesting and ironic about what happened in his life after death is that his intellectual legacy and the things he wrote became diffused, and there's something like 73 libraries who have a little chunk of Malcolm memorabilia there are about 2 or 300 what I call kind of Malcolmites out here, Malcolmologists, who have dozens of audiotape lectures or different memorabilia of Malcolm. MARABLE: Malcolm X was an extraordinary individual: talented, charismatic, a brilliant statesman and orator.
There's just an interesting correlation between those two events. I'm speaking specifically of the chapter of Malcolm X's life after death and the idea also of the unfulfilled promise of Brown v. GORDON: Manning, one of the interesting notes, too, in the book is that you show a direct correlation in terms of how one event can really change the course of life for so many and also touch on what may or may not have happened had these events not occurred.
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Given our unique heritage as people struggling to be free, that has given us a whole series of experiences and a heritage of resistance and collective struggle that unfortunately white Americans don't share with us. But when black folk talk about being an American, they focus on collective concerns and group concerns. Professor MANNING MARABLE (Columbia University Author, "Living Black History"): When white Americans talk about the experience of being an American, they emphasize values such as liberty, individualism and the right to personal property. He says the book sheds useful light on the differences between what black and white Americans value about their historic pasts. Marable is a professor of history, political science and public policy at Columbia University. In his new book, "Living Black History," scholar Manning Marable aims to preserve and pass on those stories to a younger generation.
King and many other civil rights workers past and present are part of a long, rich culture of activism in black America.
In black history, they are inextricably linked. We now go from the tradition of preaching to the tradition of activism.
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