Background
Murray Kempton was born on December 16, 1917, in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. He was a son of James Branson Kempton, a stock broker, and Sally (Ambler) Kempton.
Pulitzer Prize
Baltimore, Maryland 21218, United States
In 1939, Murray received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University.
(Through brilliant portraits of real persons, who created ...)
Through brilliant portraits of real persons, who created the myths and realities of the 1930's, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Murray Kempton brings that turbulent decade to life. Himself a child of the time, Kempton examines with the insight and imagination of a novelist the men and women, who embraced, grappled with and in many cases were destroyed by the myth of revolution.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005UF5I1Q/?tag=2022091-20
1955
(American justice and the violent fears, that underscore i...)
American justice and the violent fears, that underscore it, is the theme of Murray Kempton's brilliant examination of the landmark trial of a group of young men and women, who came to be called the Panther 21. The narrative of "The Briar Patch" explores both the mechanics of the police undercover operations, that brought the Panthers to the bar, and those of their highly publicized trial. What especially distinguishes this book is the way Kempton illustrates each of the contending forces: prosecution, defense, member of the jury, acting out this great human drama from their own angle of alienation.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0525070893/?tag=2022091-20
1973
Murray Kempton was born on December 16, 1917, in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. He was a son of James Branson Kempton, a stock broker, and Sally (Ambler) Kempton.
In 1939, Murray received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University.
During his lifetime, he also received several Honorary Doctor of Letters degrees from different educational establishments, including Grinnell College in 1973, Long Island University in 1987, Hofstra University in 1994, Lewis and Clark College in 1994.
Kempton held several jobs in the 1930's, including social worker, organizer of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union and pamphlet writer for the Young People’s Socialist League and Worker’s Defense League. During the period from 1941 till 1942, he was a publicity director for the American Labor Party. In 1942, Murray joined the New York Post newspaper as a labor writer.
In 1943, he began serving in the United States Army. His unit served in the Pacific Ocean and was ambushed by Japanese troops in the Philippines. Upon his return to the United States in 1946, Kempton joined the reporting staff of the Wilmington Morning Star newspaper (present-day Star-News newspaper) in North Carolina, a post he held till 1947. The same year, in 1947, Murray returned to the New York Post newspaper, where he eventually became an assistant to labor columnist, a position he held until 1949.
During his later career, Kempton lent his journalistic skills to the New Republic magazine, where he served as an editor from 1963 till 1964, when he joined the New York World-Telegram newspaper as an editor, holding the post until 1966. The same year, in 1966, Kempton returned to the New York Post as a columnist. He remained there until 1969.
In 1968, Kempton was arrested at the 1968 Democratic Convention for participating in a protest march.
Between 1969-1971, he acted as a columnist for the New York Review of Books magazine. In 1970, Kempton began working as a commentator at Columbia Broadcasting System, a post he held until 1977.
During the period from 1977 till 1981, Kempton again worked at the New York Post as a columnist. In 1981, he got the same position at the New York Newsday newspaper, where he continued to work until the last day of his life.
(American justice and the violent fears, that underscore i...)
1973(Through brilliant portraits of real persons, who created ...)
1955(This is the best of Murray Kempton's columns, essays, rev...)
1994Murray supported left-wing politics. However, his political stance sometimes caused him troubles — he was arrested at the 1968 Democratic Convention for participating in a protest march.
Kempton's writing was often described as "baroque". His sentences were often long and composed of dependent clauses, and he used an elevated vocabulary. Most of the time, he covered issues relevant to New York.
Quotations:
"A political convention is just not a place where you come away with any trace of faith in human nature."
"A critic is someone who enters the battlefield after the war is over and shoots the wounded."
"Any experience deeply felt makes some men better and some men worse. When it has ended, they share nothing but the recollection of a commitment in which each was tested and to some degree found wanting. The consequences of the journey change the voyager so much more than the embarking or the arrival."
"There is a raging tiger inside every man whom God put on this earth. Every man worthy of the respect of his children spends his life building inside himself a cage to pen that tiger in."
"No great scoundrel is ever uninteresting."
"It is not the least of a martyr's scourges to be canonized by the persons who burned him."
"We are all addicts in various stages of degradation where I live on the Upper West Side, some to heroin, some to small dogs, and some to the New York Times. The heroin is cut, the dogs are paranoid, and the Times cheats by skimping on the West Coast ball scores. No matter, each of us goes upon the street solely in pursuit of his own particular curse."
"By adherence to a special set of rules, the child of the shabby-genteel can sometimes leap across the time which has passed by his family and function in the real world without doing violence to the hopes his mother held out for him. But those who cannot live within this pattern are the freaks and poets, and they travel a different road to peace."
Murray was a member of American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Murray was a modest, courtly and generous man.
Murray married Mina Bluethenthal on June 11, 1942. Their marriage produced several children, including Sally Ambler, James Murray, Arthur Herbert and David Llewellyn. Later, Kempton divorced his first wife and married Beverly Gary. They gave birth to one son, named Christopher.