"One thing I remember... ...is how vigorously he stressed the fact that he saw himself as both a scholar, and an activist. For him, the two vocations were inseparable... ...when he became the founding director of the Institute for Research in African American Studies (IRAAS) a few years earlier, he'd envisioned it as fundamentally a community resource. And by 'community,' he pointed out, 'I don't mean just Columbia, or even Morningside Heights.' He gestured toward the window of his 6th floor office, which afforded views to the north and the east. 'We're not in Morningside Heights! We're in Harlem!'"
John McMillan, former graduate assistant to Marable[9]
In 1979, Marable joined the New American Movement (NAM), an organization of veterans of the New Left who were trying to build a successor to Students for a Democratic Society. In 1982, NAM merged with Michael Harrington’s Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee to form the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and Marable was elected as one of the new organization’s vice chairs. He left the DSA in 1985 after Michael Harrington and his allies, following the lead of much of the mainstream union leadership, refused to back Jesse Jackson’s insurgent campaign in 1984.
Marable served as Chair of Movement for a Democratic Society (MDS).[10] Marable served on the Board of Directors for the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network (HSAN), a non-profit coalition of public figures working to utilize hip-hop as an agent for social change.[11] Marable was also a member of the New York Legislature's Amistad Commission, created to review state curriculum regarding the slave trade.[12]
Personal life
Marable was married twice, first to his Earlham classmate, Hazel Ann Marable, and then from 1996 until his death, to Leith Mullings, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
Populist Afrocentrism was the perfect social theory for the upwardly mobile black petty bourgeoisie. It gave them a sense of ethnic superiority and cultural originality, without requiring the hard, critical study of historical realities. It provided a philosophical blueprint to avoid concrete struggle within the real world. ... It was, in short, only the latest theoretical construct of a politics of racial identity, a world-view designed to discuss the world but never really to change it.
It was reported in June 2004 by activist group Racism Watch that Marable had called for immediate action to be taken to end the U.S. military's use of Raphael Patai's book The Arab Mind, which Marable described as "a book full of racially charged stereotypes and generalizations."[14] In a 2008 column, Marable endorsed Senator Barack Obama's bid for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.[15]
Marable's biography of Malcolm X concluded that Malcolm X exaggerated his early criminal career, and engaged in a homosexual relationship with a white businessman. He also concluded that some of the killers of Malcolm X are still alive and were never charged.[18][7]
Critics of the biography contend that the focus on Marable's discussion of Malcolm's potential same-sex relationships, about three sentences long in a 592-page book, overlooks more important political statements Marable makes about Malcolm's underlying lifelong commitment to revolutionary Pan Africanism.[19]