Alberty Murray (1997)

Albert Murray is a literary and jazz critic, novelist, biographer, and a foundational thinker in the field of American Studies. Born in Nokomis, Alabama, in 1916, Murray had at least two careers before publishing his first collection of essays, The Omni-Americans: New Perspectives on Black Experience and American Culture, in 1970. His life journey includes graduating from Tuskegee, traveling the world in the Air Force, receiving a degree from New York University, witnessing firsthand the musical development of greats like Dizzy Gillespie and sharing his world and academic knowledge. Murray said that literature provides us “equipment for living.” His literary production gave us a wealth of equipment. His latest book is a novel called The Magic Keys (2005).