Manning Marable, 60, an influential historian whose forthcoming Malcolm X biography could revise perceptions of the slain civil-rights leader, died Friday from complications of pneumonia. He died just days before “Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention,” a book described as his life’s work, was to be released.
Two decades in the making, the nearly 600-page biography is described as a re-evaluation of Malcolm X’s life, bringing fresh insight to subjects such as his autobiography and his assassination at the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan on Feb. 21, 1965.
Marable directed ethnic- studies programs at a number of colleges, including notably the Race Relations Institute at Fisk University and the Africana and Latin American Studies program at Colgate University.
He was chairman of the black studies department at Ohio State University in the late 1980s. From 1989 to 1993, he taught ethnic studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Blair Kelley, a history professor at North Carolina State University, called Marable’s death a “devastating” loss for black historians.
“I can’t believe he died before the book came out. He really deserved the opportunity to be celebrated for his groundbreaking scholarship,” Kelley wrote on Twitter. “He touched so many of us as an activist, scholar, historian, political scientist, publisher, mentor. Truly a great man.”
John C. Haas, 92, the former chairman of global chemical company Rohm and Haas who was known for his charitable work, died Saturday of natural causes.
The son of company co-founder Otto Haas, he started with Rohm and Haas as a process engineer in Philadelphia in 1942. He became a vice president in 1953 and was board chairman from 1974 to 1978.
Haas was named chairman of his parents’ charitable foundation in 1960, now known as the William Penn Foundation. He oversaw its growth over the next three decades, according to a family statement.
He served as president of the Greater Philadelphia United Way, the company’s website said.
