Clement A Price

Dr. Price was beloved as a historian, teacher, mentor, husband, friend, citizen, neighbor, collaborator, patron of the arts and humanities, public servant, public intellectual, advisor to leaders at all levels of government, and clear-eyed observer of Newark. He taught history at Rutgers University-Newark (RU-N), where he was a Board of Governors Distinguished Service Professor. The Newark resident was founding director of the Rutgers Institute on Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience at RU-N, a catalyst of civic engagement that is celebrating its second decade as an interdisciplinary academic center that presents public lectures, fellowships, symposia, film screenings, performances, exhibitions, and other programs that foster broad public discussion on the arts and culture, urban life and development, diversity and race relations, education, and history at the local, national, and transnational levels. Dr. Price also was co-founder of the acclaimed annual Marion Thompson Wright (MTW) Lecture Series, the oldest, largest and most prestigious Black History Month event in the state, drawing thousands of people over the decades to listen, learn, and engage with each other over shared civic challenges. Dr. Price chaired President Obama's 2008 transition team for the National Endowment for the Humanities and is vice chair of the President’s Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. He was the Newark City Historian and chairman of the 350th anniversary of Newark’s founding in 1666. Past and present leadership roles included the NJ State Council on the Arts, the Fund for New Jersey, the Save Ellis Island Foundation, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, the Newark Education Trust, the Save Ellis Island Foundation, the advisory council for the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and the Scholarly Advisory Committee to the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Smithsonian Institution. He chaired the New Jersey State Council on the Arts from 1980 to 1983. A native of Washington, D.C., Dr. Price taught undergraduate and graduate courses that spanned 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. Dr. Price was married to Mary Sue Sweeney Price, the former director of the Newark Museum, and they were often described as “the first couple of Newark” because of their many contributions to the city and its people. Dr. Price received the BA and MA degrees from the University of Bridgeport, and the Ph.D. from Rutgers University.