Open Minds Book Club: The Omni-Americans

Wednesday, October 22, 2025
4:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.
Robert C. Pew Grand Rapids Campus
Alumni, Community, Faculty, Staff, Students

For the October 2025 session of Open Minds, we will be reading and discussing The Omni-Americans: Some Alternatives to the Folklore of White Supremacy by Albert Murray.

"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."

The discussion for this book will be held on Wednesday, October 22, from 4:00 to 6:00 pm in the Richard M. DeVos Center’s Meijer Regency Room located on the GVSU City Campus.

Free copies of the book will be mailed to GVSU students who register by midnight on September 25th.

See the full Open Minds Book Club schedule here!

Click here for additional information

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Location Information

Meijer Regency Room

Richard M. DeVos Center

401 West Fulton Street
Grand Rapids, MI
49504-6431

Contact Information

If you have any questions, please email Kahler Sweeney.

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This event was added to the calendar by Kahler Sweeney (sweenkah@gvsu.edu) on Tuesday, August 12, 2025 and was last updated on Thursday, August 14, 2025 at 8:36 a.m.

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