Clement Alexander Price is
Professor of History and Director of the Rutgers Institute on Ethnicity,
Culture, and the Modern Experience at Rutgers University, Newark Campus. He
received the BA and MA degrees from the University of Bridgeport, and the
Ph.D. from Rutgers University. He has served as visiting professor at
Princeton University, the New Jersey City University, Montclair State
University, and Fairleigh Dickenson University.
A native of Washington, D.C., Dr. Price teaches courses that span American
history, including the Development of the United States, Afro-American
History, Civil War and Reconstruction, Intellectual History of Afro-America,
Topics in the History of Newark, New Jersey, United States Urban History,
History of the Civil Rights Movement, Memory and History, Senior Seminar in
History, The Black Experience in Western Civilization, Paul Robeson and 20th
Century Black Modernism, and Modern America. His courses draw upon current
historiographical issues and debates and they encourage students to consider
the past from several perspectives and the future of the past in public
discourse.
Dr. Price is the author of many publications that explore Afro-American
History, race relations and modern culture in the United States and in New
Jersey, including two books Freedom Not Far Distant: A Documentary History
of Afro-Americans in New Jersey and Many Voices, Many Opportunities:
Cultural Pluralism and American Arts Policy. His essay, Been So Long: A
Critique of the Process That Shaped “Victory to Freedom: Afro-American Life
in the Fifties, appears in Kenneth L. Ames, Barbara Franco and L. Thomas
Frye, Ideas and Images: Developing Interpretive History Exhibits. He served
as the chief historical consultant for the Jewish Museum's 1992 exhibition
Bridges and Boundaries: African Americans and American Jews and for the 1998
award winning documentary film Chanceman's Brothers & Sisters: The Origins
of the 20th Century Morris County Black Community. He is completing a study
of Afro-American cultural and social history in 20th century Newark, New
Jersey, and a biography of Dr. Marion Thompson Wright, a pioneering
historian of New Jersey race relations.
Dr. Price served as the chairman and historical consultant for the New
Jersey Performing Arts Center's World Festival II-Inventing America: Memory,
Work, and Spirit/A Festival of Pan African America in 1998-99. He is the
consulting historian for the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority's
forthcoming public arts and history project, the Civil Rights Garden at the
historic Carnegie Library in Atlantic City, New Jersey. He also served as
member of the New Jersey Governor's Advisory Committee on the Preservation
and Use of Ellis Island and is now a director of Save Ellis Island!
Dr. Price is the recipient of numerous academic and service awards and
honors, including the Richard J. Hughes Award from the New Jersey Historical
Commission and the Governor's Alice B. Paul Award for Humanitarian Service.
He is also the recipient of four teaching awards, including Teacher of the
Year, Essex County College, 1969; Outstanding Teacher of the Year, Rutgers
University, Newark College of Arts and Sciences, 1977; Henry J. Browne
Outstanding Teacher of the Year, Rutgers University, University College,
1991; Rutgers University's highest award for teaching, the Warren I. Susman
Award for Excellence in Teaching, in 1991, and he is the 1999 New Jersey
Professor of the Year, so designated by the Carnegie Foundation for the
Advancement of Teaching. He holds an honorary degree for his work as a
public intellectual from William Paterson University and the Distinguished
Alumnus Award from the University of Bridgeport. A past chairman of the New
Jersey State Council on the Arts, Dr. Price is currently president of the
Board of Trustees of the Fund for New Jersey and the Vice President of the
Advisory Board for the Newark Public Schools. In 1981, he co-founded, with
Giles R. Wright, the annual Marion Thompson Wright Lecture Series, a
scholarly conference series held during Black History Month at
Rutgers-Newark. He serves as director of the Series. On November 9, 1997, at
Rutgers-Newark, he mounted the first major program of the Institute on
Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience, titled Memory and Newark,
July 1967, which acknowledged in a public forum for undergraduate students
and the larger community the memories of a cross-section of citizens who
witnessed the Newark riots of thirty years ago. On February 21, 1998, at
Rutgers-Newark, Dr. Price mounted the 18th annual Marion Thompson Wright
Lecture Series program Climbing Jacob's Ladder: The Life and Times of Paul
Robeson, and on November 8, 1998, the conference Beyond the Golden Door:
American Jews and the Post-World War II Years. Among his most recent public
programs, mounted with Giles R. Wright, are the conferences On the Meaning
of Freedom, featuring Eric Foner and Chinua Achebe, and, in February 2000,
Time…Africa and the Diaspora, which featured Ali Mazrui, Sterling Stuckey,
Anne McClintock, Steve Colson, Reggie Workman, Oliver Lake, and Andrew
Cyrille.
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