ITHACA, N.Y. -- Columbia University Professor Manning Marable, an eminent historian and one of the most influential interpreters of the black experience in America, will be visiting the Cornell University campus to deliver the 2004 Martin Luther King Jr. guest lecture as well as a Sage Chapel sermon. Marable's talks, listed here, are free and open to the public.

Sunday, Feb. 22, 11 a.m., Sage Chapel: "When the Spirit Moves: Black Faith and the Struggle for Freedom." Monday, Feb. 23, 4:45 p.m., Sage Chapel: Martin Luther King Jr. speaker, "Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Dream Deferred."

The public also is invited to dine with Marable at a full-scale brunch at Okenshield's in Willard Straight Hall, Sunday, following the Sage Chapel service. The brunch features a complete Southern-style menu. Admission is $10 for Cornell students with meal plans and Big Red Bucks and $13.50 for the general public.

Marable is professor of history and political science and founding director of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia. He was the founding director of Colgate University's Africana and Hispanic Studies Program, from 1983 to 1986. From 1987 to 1989, Marable served as chairman of the Department of Black Studies at Ohio State University. He then taught at the University of Colorado-Boulder, from 1989 to 1993, as professor of ethnic studies, history and political science.

"Dr. Marable, who was also a faculty member of Cornell's Africana Studies and Research Center in the 1980s, is uniquely gifted and skilled to address the legacy of Dr. King and place it in a larger historical and contemporary context that will inform, inspire and empower his listeners,"

said Kenneth I. Clarke, director of Cornell United Religious Work.

Marable is the author and editor of at least 15 books, including three of his most recent titles: What Black America Thinks (Houghton-Mifflin, 2001); Let Nobody Turn Us Around: Voices of Resistance, Reform and Renewal (with co-editor Leith Mullings, Rowman and Littlefield, 2000); and Dispatches from the Ebony Tower: Intellectuals Confront the African American Experience (Columbia University Press, 2000). Among his other works are Black Leadership (1998); Black Liberation in Conservative America (1997); Speaking Truth to Power: Essays on Race, Radicalism and Resistance (1996); Beyond Black and White (1995); The Crisis of Color and Democracy (1992); and Race, Reform and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction in Black America, 1945-1990 (1991).

Marable also has written more than 200 articles for academic journals, edited volumes and other scholarly publications. In 1999, he launched a new quarterly publication titled Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society . The journal examines key theoretical issues within black America, Africa and the Caribbean. Marable's syndicated newspaper column, "Along the Color Line," offers commentary on African-American politics and public affairs and has been published since 1976 in more than 300 newspapers and magazines in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, the Caribbean and India.

A prominent lecturer and interpreter of the politics and history of race in America, Marable is a frequent guest on NBC's "Today Show," ABC's "Weekend News," Fox News, PBS, C-Span, National Public Radio, the Charlie Rose Show and BBC television and radio. Marable is co-founder of the Black Radical Congress, a progressive coalition of African-American activists, and he donates much of his time to civil rights, labor, religious and social justice groups.