How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America is a classic study of the intersection of racism and class in the United States. It has become a standard text for courses in American politics and history, and has been central to the education of thousands of political activists since the 1980s. This edition is presented with a new foreword by Leith Mullings.
Foreword by Leith Mullings
What People Are Saying
"How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America is one of those paradigm-shifting, life-changing texts that has not lost its currency or relevanceeven after three decades. Its provocative treatise on the ravages of late capitalism, state violence, incarceration, and patriarchy on the life chances and struggles of black working-class men and women shaped an entire generation, directing our energies to the terrain of the prison-industrial complex, anti-racist work, labor organizing, alternatives to racial capitalism, and challenging patriarchypersonally and politically." —Robin D. G. Kelley
"In this new edition of his classic text . . . Marable can challenge a new generation to find solutions to the problems that constrain the present but not our potential to seek and define a better future."Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
"[A] prescient analysis." —Michael Eric Dyson
“Manning Marable never stopped wrestling with this landmark volume, and neither should we. Ranging widely across time, spheres, and data, this work, at once polemical and analytical, continues to offer an account of inequality at the intersection of class, gender, and race that has yet to be matched. Some three decades on, How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America remains a book that provokes, informs, and motivates.” —Ira Katznelson, Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History, Columbia University
“A cohesive portrait of black America.” —Cornel West
“Manning was an unflinching and breathtakingly prolific scholar whose commitments to racial, economic, gender, and international justice were unparalleled. … There are two generations of African-American scholars who will remember him as much for the mentor he was to us as for the research legacy he leaves. … When I think of Manning himself it is as a great well — possessing reserves of energy, intellect and commitment I have never before witnessed.” —Melissa Harris-Perry, MSNBC
“A groundbreaking historian … one of America’s truest public intellectuals.” —John Nichols, The Nation
About the Author
Manning Marable (1950-2011) was a professor of public affairs, history and African-American Studies at Columbia University. Marable authored fifteen books including Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for History.
Leith Mullings (1945-2020) (Foreword) was a distinguished professor of anthropology at the Graduate Center CUNY. She was an anthropologist, author, lecturer and educator. She served as president of the American Anthropological Association from 2011 to 2013. Much of her work focuses on the analysis of inequality and she has been involved in research projects in Africa, the United States and Latin America. Through the lens of feminist and critical race theory, she has analyzed a variety of topics including kinship, representation, gentrification, health disparities and social movements. Mullings had a strong commitment to producing scholarship that addresses timely social issues, undertaken in collaboration with research subjects and sought to empower communities through knowledge. Her web site is: http://leithmullings.com.