Rediscover the "most important book on black-white relationships" in
America in a special 50th anniversary edition introduced by Henry Louis
Gates, Jr. (Walker Percy)
"The United States is in actuality not a nation of black people and
white people. It is a nation of multicolored people . . . 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."
These words, written by Albert Murray at the height of the Black Power
movement, cut against the grain of their moment, and announced the
arrival of a major new force in American letters. In his 1970 classic
The Omni-Americans, Murray took aim at protest writers and social
scientists who accentuated the "pathology" of race in American life.
Against narratives of marginalization and victimhood, Murray argued that
black art and culture, particularly jazz and blues, stand at the very
headwaters of the American mainstream, and that much of what is best in
American art embodies the "blues-hero tradition"--a heritage of grace,
wit, and inspired improvisation in the face of adversity.
Reviewing The Omni-Americans in 1970, Walker Percy called it "the most
important book on black-white relationships . . . indeed on American
culture . . . published in this generation." As Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
makes clear in his introduction, Murray's singular poetic voice,
impassioned argumentation, and pluralistic vision have only become more
urgently needed today.
