Clement Alexander Price | |
|---|---|
| Born | October 13, 1945 Washington, D.C., U.S. |
| Died | November 5, 2014 |
| Education | University of Bridgeport; Rutgers University-New Brunswick |
| Employer | Rutgers University-Newark |
| Notable work | 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 |
| Title | Board of Governors Distinguished Service Professor of History at Rutgers University-Newark; 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; a trustee of the National Trust for Historic Preservation; City of Newark Historian; chair to the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and chair to the board of the Save Ellis Island Foundation |
| Spouse | Mary Sue Sweeney |
| Awards | Board of Governors Distinguished Service Professor of History at Rutgers University-Newark |
| Website | Price Institute |
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 is the namesake of the jazz club Clement's Place.
He was appointed City of Newark Historian in early 2014. His service to New Jersey included appointments by Governors Brendan Byrne and Thomas 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.
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.