{"id":33056,"date":"2013-08-22T01:12:23","date_gmt":"2013-08-22T01:12:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=33056"},"modified":"2013-08-22T01:12:23","modified_gmt":"2013-08-22T01:12:23","slug":"albert-murray-author-who-drew-on-the-free-wheeling-spirit-of-jazz-dies-at-97","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=33056","title":{"rendered":"Albert Murray, author who drew on the free-wheeling spirit of jazz, dies at 97"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/entertainment\/books\/albert-murray\/2013\/08\/19\/ac4f9630-08e1-11e3-9941-6711ed662e71_story.html\" target=\"_blank\">Albert Murray, author who drew on the free-wheeling spirit of jazz, dies at 97<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\" target=\"_blank\">The Washington Post<\/a><br \/>\n2013-08-19<\/p>\n<p><strong>Adam Bernstein<\/strong>, Reporter<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Albert_Murray_(writer)\" target=\"_blank\">Albert Murray<\/a>, a self-described \u201criff-style intellectual\u201d whose novels, nonfiction books and essays drew on the free-wheeling spirit of jazz and whose works underscored how black culture and the blues in particular were braided into American life, died Aug. 18 at his home in New York City. He was 97&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;He began a full-time writing career after leaving the Air Force in 1962 at the rank of major. His debut collection, \u201cThe Omni-Americans: New Perspectives on Black Experience and American Culture,\u201d had immediate cultural impact.<\/p>\n<p>It was a tome of contrarian, independent thinking \u2014 a riposte to both black complacency and black militancy. It also fought attempts to interpret black life through sociological concepts, even those espoused by well-meaning liberals such as Daniel Patrick Moynihan.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe United States is in actuality not a nation of black people and white people,\u201d Mr. Murray wrote. \u201cIt is a nation of multicolored people. There are white Americans so to speak and black Americans. <strong>But any fool can see that the white people are not really white and that black people are not black. They are all interrelated one way or another.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n<p>American culture, he continued, is <strong>\u201cincontestably mulatto,\u201d<\/strong> and Americans of all races are inheritors of a cultural tradition that makes them \u201cpart Yankee, part backwoodsman and Indian \u2014 and part Negro.\u201d&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire obituary <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/entertainment\/books\/albert-murray\/2013\/08\/19\/ac4f9630-08e1-11e3-9941-6711ed662e71_story.html\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Albert Murray, author who drew on the free-wheeling spirit of jazz, dies at 97 The Washington Post 2013-08-19 Adam Bernstein, Reporter Albert Murray, a self-described \u201criff-style intellectual\u201d whose novels, nonfiction books and essays drew on the free-wheeling spirit of jazz and whose works underscored how black culture and the blues in particular were braided into [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1245,8,20],"tags":[15515,15476,2875,2581],"class_list":["post-33056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-biography","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-adam-bernstein","tag-albert-murray","tag-the-washington-post","tag-washington-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33056\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}