Overview

Rediscover the most important book on black-white relationships in America in this special fiftieth anniversary edition. 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.

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Albert Murray (1916-2013) was born in Alabama and graduated from Tuskegee Institute in 1939. His books include South to a Very Old Place, The Hero and the Blues, Train Whistle Guitar, The Spyglass Tree, The Seven League Boots, The Magic Keys, and Stomping the Blues, among others. With Wynton Marsalis and others he was a cofounder of Jazz at Lincoln Center. Murray's collected works are published in two volumes by Library of America. Mirron Willis--actor of film, stage, and television--is the winner of the prestigious Audie Award for best narration in 2012 and a finalist for the Audie in 2015, as well as the winner of four AudioFile Earphones Awards for his audiobook recordings. He has worked extensively in film and television and on stage with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the Houston Shakespeare Festival, and the Ensemble Theatre, among others. He has recorded some 150 audiobooks, including the Smokey Dalton series by Kris Nelscott and My Song by Harry Belafonte. He resides and records audiobooks on his family's historic ranch in East Texas.

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