Murray Kempton

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Murray Kempton (December 16, 1917 - May 5, 1997) was an important American journalist who was a significant presence on the political left for many years. He was born James Murray Kempton in Baltimore.

He worked as a copyboy for H. L. Mencken at the Baltimore Evening Sun. He was educated at Johns Hopkins, where he was editor-in-chief of the Johns Hopkins News-Letter.

After his graduation in 1939, he worked for a short time as a labor organizer, then joined the staff of the New York Post.

He served in the U.S. Air Force during World War II, returning to the New York Post in 1949 as labor editor and later as a columnist. He also wrote for the NYC-based Sun and World-Telegram.

During the 1960s he edited The New Republic. In 1981 began writing a regular column for Newsday, and was also a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1985.

In his Newsday years, Kempton became something of an elder statesman for a new generation of politically conscious journalists. He never learned to drive, and hence could often be spotted riding a bicycle in Manhattan wearing a three-piece suit. He often smoked a pipe. As a writer he was something of a stylist, who achieved great precision with his sometimes byzantine sentences.

His books include Part of Our Time: Some Ruins and Monuments of the Thirties (1955), America Comes of Middle Age: Columns 1950-1962 (1963), The Briar Patch: The People of the State of New York v. Lumumba Shakur (1973, winner of National Book Award), and Rebellions, Perversities, and Main Events (1994).

In 2004 the NYRB imprint reprinted Part of Our Time. The book includes portraits of Paul Robeson, Alger Hiss, Whittaker Chambers, the Hollywood Ten, Elizabeth Bentley, Mary Heaton Vorse, and the labor leaders Walter Reuther and Joe Curran.

Kempton, who was ill with pancreatic cancer, died of a heart attack in his home; he was 79 years old.