Clement Alexander Price

Clement Alexander Price (October 13, 1945 – November 5, 2014) was an American historian. As the Board of Governors Distinguished Service Professor of History at Rutgers University-Newark, Price brought his study of the past to bear on contemporary social issues in his adopted hometown of Newark, New Jersey, and across the nation. He was the founding director of the Institute on Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience at Rutgers; the vice chair of President Barack Obama's Advisory Council on Historic Preservation; the chair of Obama's transition team for the National Endowment for the Humanities; a member of the Scholarly Advisory Committee of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture; and a trustee of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. He was appointed City of Newark Historian in early 2014. His service to New Jersey included appointments by Governors Brendan Byrne and Thomas H. Kean to the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, which he served as chair for two terms, and by Governor Christine Todd Whitman to the board of the Save Ellis Island Foundation, which he also chaired.

Price was born on October 13, 1945, in Washington, D.C., the middle child of James Leo Price Sr., who was employed by the United States Department of the Treasury, and Anna Christine (Spann) Price, a home maker through much of his childhood, and later a domestic worker and professional seamstress. His older brother, James Leo Price Jr., a distinguished school principal (retired), returned to South Carolina to raise his family. Younger sister Jarmila Louise Price-Gaines, a director of music education programs, resides in California. Price's parents had both been participants in the Great Migration of African Americans from the American South in the early twentieth century. They evaded Jim Crow by moving to northern cities in search of better employment and educational opportunities for their children.

Price was encouraged to enter the field of African American History by his graduate advisor at the University of Bridgeport, Bruce M. Stave. As a doctoral candidate at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, Price began researching Newark's and New Jersey's African-American history, and taught for the 1968–69 academic year at the newly opened Essex County College. In February 1969, a group of black Rutgers University-Newark students occupied the campus's Conklin Hall, demanding increased enrollment of minority students and increased hiring of minority professors. As one result of the university's response to the students' demands, Price was hired and began teaching history at Rutgers University-Newark in the fall semester of 1969. He remained an active member of the history faculty until his death, including serving as director of the graduate program and chair of African and African-American Studies. In 2002 he was named Rutgers University Board of Governors Distinguished Service Professor.

Price's teaching and research focused on African-American history and culture; United States urban and social history; New Jersey history; public history; and American race relations. His dissertation, completed in 1975, was a social history of Newark's black community in the thirty years after World War I. Other writings include: Freedom Not Far Distant: A Documentary History of Afro-Americans in New Jersey (1980); Many Voices, Many Opportunities: Cultural Pluralism and American Arts Policy (1994); and the three volume Slave Culture: A Documentary Collection of the Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project.

Together with Gloria Hopkins Buck, Marjorie Fredericks and others, Price was a founding member in 1975 of the Newark Black Film Festival, the longest continuously running festival of its kind and widely admired. The 40th anniversary presentation in the summer of 2015 was dedicated to his memory.

Price was the foremost authority on the black New Jersey past by virtue of his Freedom Not Far Distant: A Documentary History of Afro-Americans in New Jersey (1980), Many Voices, Many Opportunities: Cultural Pluralism and American Arts Policy (1994) and numerous other scholarly works.

In 1988, Price married Mary Sue Sweeney, now director emerita of the Newark Museum.

In addition to his career at Rutgers University-Newark, he was a scholar in residence at the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation from 2001 to 2002; a visiting professor at Princeton University in 1996; a scholar in residence at Bloomfield College in 1990; a visiting professor at Montclair State College, Seton Hall University, New Jersey City University, Kean College of New Jersey, Fairleigh Dickinson University, and County College of Morris between 1975 and 1994; and an instructor of history at Essex County College in Newark from 1968 to 1969.

With artist Larry Kirkland and landscape designer Robert Preston, he designed the Civil Rights Garden in Atlantic City, New Jersey, documenting the history and struggles of African Americans. Opened in 2002, this public art and history project of the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority has been called the most significant public commemoration of the modern civil rights movement in any northern state. He also served on the National Trust's advisory committee for the restoration of President Lincoln's Cottage at the Soldiers' Home in Washington, D.C., which opened in 2008.

Price was a leading authority on Newark's history. The class he developed on the topic has been among the most popular at Rutgers University-Newark. He wrote extensively about the city's history, but also shared it in more direct ways with the public, via regular bus tours of the city and media appearances. "The Once and Future Newark with Clement Alexander Price", produced by Rutgers University-Newark and broadcast on New Jersey Network in 2006 has been reissued in 2015 in a special expanded commemorative version. In early 2014, Price was named the official historian of Newark. He served as chairman of the planning committee for Newark's 350th Anniversary, which took place in 2016.

Price was agency lead for the National Endowment for the Humanities on President Barack Obama's 2008 transition team. He was appointed twice by President Obama as vice chair of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, and appointed Newark City Historian in 2014 and as chairman of the 350th anniversary of Newark's founding in 1666. Price was also a member of the Scholarly Advisory Committee to the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African American History and Culture; a member of the advisory council for the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History; a trustee of the National Trust for Historic Preservation; a trustee of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation; and former chairman of the Save Ellis Island Foundation and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.

On November 2, 2014, Price succumbed to a catastrophic cerebral hemorrhage while speaking in New Brunswick at a Rutgers Jewish Film Festival screening of Joachim Prinz: I Shall Not Be Silent, a film project in which he had participated. Rabbi Bennett Miller shared the podium and recounted Price's final words in response to a question about the future of civil rights in the U.S.: "I still have hope." Price died on November 5, never having regained consciousness.

Price was the recipient of numerous awards for academic and community service, including: appointment as City of Newark Historian, 2014; The New Jersey Nets Basketball Black History Month award at the Prudential Arena in Newark, New Jersey, February, 2011; the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Leadership Award from Essex County in February, 2010; a Lifetime Achievement Award from Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) New Jersey in November, 2008; and New Jersey Professor of the Year by The Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) in 1999. In 2006, he was inducted into the Rutgers University Hall of Distinguished Alumni. He held honorary degrees from William Paterson University, Essex County College, New Jersey Institute of Technology, and Drew University.

Price founded the Institute on Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience in 1997 at Rutgers University-Newark, an interdisciplinary academic center that, through public partnerships and programming, offers the Newark metropolitan area the finest thinkers and artists engaged with key issues of modern life. Its motivating belief is in the centrality of creativity and critical thinking to the continued revitalization of Greater Newark and the nation. The Institute is considered the culmination of his life's work, and works with community partners, scholars, and artists to bring the important civic issues in race, culture, and Newark into public discourse through public programming. The Institute was renamed for Price on February 20, 2015 as the Clement A. Price Institute on Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience.

The Marion Thompson Wright Lecture Series is presented by the Institute, one of the longest running and considered among the most prestigious Black History Month observances in the country. It was founded in 1981 by Price and Giles R. Wright, the inaugural director of the Afro-American History Program at the New Jersey Historical Commission. In 2015, the lecture series celebrated its 35th Anniversary with the theme "Curating Black America", honoring the forthcoming opening of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. The 36th Annual Marion Thompson Wright Lecture series will take place on February 20, 2016 and will explore criminal justice in the African American Experience. Among the distinguished lecturers in this series have been Sterling Stuckey, Max Roach, James Farmer, Esther Rolle, Ali Mazrui, Eric Foner, Basil Davidson and David Blight.