William Raspberry dies: Washington Post columnist wrote about social issues including race, poverty
Source: Washington Post
William Raspberry, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Washington Post whose fiercely independent views illuminated conflicts concerning education, poverty, crime and race, and who was one of the first black journalists to gain a wide following in the mainstream press, died July 17 at his home in Washington. He was 76.
He had prostate cancer, said his wife, Sondra Raspberry.
Mr. Raspberry wrote an opinion column for The Post for nearly 40 years before retiring in 2005. More than 200 newspapers carried his syndicated columns, which were filtered through the prism of his experience growing up in the segregated South.
His writings were often provocative but seldom predictable. Although he considered himself a liberal, Mr. Raspberry often bucked many of the prevailing pieties of liberal orthodoxy. He favored integration but opposed busing children to achieve racial balance. He supported gun control but — during a time when the District seemed to be a free-fire zone for drug sellers — he could understand the impulse to shoot back.
Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/william-raspberry-dies-washington-post-columnist-wrote-about-social-issues-including-race-poverty/2012/07/17/gJQAS210qW_story.html
I've missed his columns the past few years. Sorry to hear he won't be writing any more.
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Presumably the original name came from the fact that they grew raspberries ("Go see William." "Which William? There's dozens of them." "You know, William with the Raspberries." "Hey, that's clever, we should start giving a second name to everybody!" "Brilliant!"
The blazon, for other heraldry nerds, would be Gules, on a Bend Argent three Crosses Crosslet Fitchy.