In Memoriam: Clement Alexander Price, 1945-2014

Clement Alexander Price, the Board of Governors Distinguished Service Professor and the founding director of the Institute on Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience at Rutgers University-Newark, died on November 5 after suffering a stroke three days earlier. He was 69 years old.

Professor Price had served on the Rutgers University faculty since 1975. He was the author and editor of many scholarly works including Freedom Not Far Distant: A Documentary History of Afro-Americans in New Jersey (New Jersey Historical Society, 1980) and his most recent effort, the three-volume Slave Culture: A Documentary Collection of the Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project (Greenwood Publishing, 2004), where he was a co-editor.

Professor Price held bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut. He held a Ph.D. in history from Rutgers University.

Nancy Cantor, chancellor of Rutgers University-Newark, said in a statement that Professor Price “exuded a love of humanity so deep and wide, so thorough and universal, that one could not be in his presence and not want to join him in whatever endeavor engaged him, because whatever engaged him was never about what he needed, but what we all need — understanding, reconciliation, justice, generosity, peace, love.”