Murray Kempton

MURRAY KEMPTON was born in 1917 and raised in the Mount Vernon neighborhood of Baltimore. He spent much of his career as a columnist for The New York Post and, later, New York Newsday. He wrote regularly for The New York Review of Books and contributed journalism, essays, and criticism to publications including The Progressive, Esquire, Rolling Stone, and The New Republic, where he worked briefly as an editor. He wrote two books: Part of Our Time: Some Ruins and Monuments of the Thirties (1955) and The Briar Patch: The People of New York vs. Lumumba Shakur, et al. (1973), which won a National Book Award. His other distinctions include two George Polk awards; the inaugural Sidney Hillman Prize; a Grammy for his contribution to the liner notes of a Frank Sinatra boxed set; and the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1985. He died in New York City in 1997.