the unsquarest person around

Albert Murray's defiance of
separatism and celebration of the "Omni-American,"
inspired a generation of freethinking black intellectuals

The Blue Devils of Nada by Albert Murray Pantheon, 238 pages

Seven League Boots by Albert Murray Pantheon, 369 pages

A new generation of African-American intellectuals has moved into the spotlight in the past few years, spearheaded by such figures as Stanley Crouch, Cornel West, and Stephen Carter. These thinkers don't share any specific party line -- indeed, the trio listed above have violent disagreements on any number of issues. But in various ways, they have all tried to shift the national debate on race away from a polarized position, in which black and white Americans square off as inevitable antagonists. They've also cast a skeptical eye on the sacred cows and cast-iron clichés of the debate, and demolished a good many of them in the process.

If I had to name a candidate for the Great Anticipator, my hands-down choice would be Albert Murray. This brilliant critic, novelist, and biographer has spent a quarter-century staking out the very terrain now being defended by his intellectual progeny. Not for nothing has Stanley Crouch described him (in "The All-American Skin Game") as "my mentor and far more my father than the fellow whose blood runs in my veins."

Murray was born in Nokomis, Alabama in 1916. He attended the Tuskegee Institute in the early 1940s, and after a year of graduate studies at NYU, he divided his time between teaching at Tuskegee and serving in the air force. It wasn't until 1962, at the age of 46, when he retired from the military, that Murray began writing in earnest. He soon made up for lost time with a flurry of astonishing books, kicking off with "The Omni-Americans" in 1970.

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