Alvin Victor Burt (September 11, 1927 – November 29, 2008) an author and longtime

journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalis ...

at ''

The Miami Herald The ''Miami Herald'' is an American daily newspaper owned by the McClatchy Company and headquartered in Doral, Florida, a city in western Miami-Dade County and the Miami metropolitan area, several miles west of Downtown Miami.Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...

, was born Sept. 11, 1927, in Oglethorpe County, Georgia and grew up at the family home in Jacksonville, Florida. He served as a sports writer, news reporter, editor, editorial writer and columnist. Burt reported from Washington to Latin America and the Caribbean and throughout Florida. Before working with ''The Miami Herald'' he had positions with the ''

Atlanta Journal ''The Atlanta Journal-Constitution'' is the only major daily newspaper in the metropolitan area of Atlanta, Georgia. It is the flagship publication of Cox Enterprises. The ''Atlanta Journal-Constitution'' is the result of the merger between ...

'' and the '' Jacksonville Journal''. He was seriously wounded by "

friendly fire In military terminology, friendly fire or fratricide is an attack by belligerent or neutral forces on friendly troops while attempting to attack enemy/hostile targets. Examples include misidentifying the target as hostile, cross-fire while en ...

" while covering the US invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965. For many years he wrote a back-page column for ''The Miami Herald'' Sunday magazine on interesting people and places around Florida that drew him quite a following. Floridian author

David Nolan David Nolan may refer to: * David Nolan (politician) (1943–2010), co-founder of the United States Libertarian Party * David Nolan (American author) David Nolan is an American author, civil rights activist, and historian. Biography Nolan was b ...

said he used to buy the ''Herald'' just to read Burt's column. Many of them were collected in book form as ''Becalmed in the Mullet Latitudes'' (1984), ''Al Burt's Florida'' (1997), and ''Tropic of Cracker'' (1999). A scholar and advocate of the

Florida cracker Florida crackers were colonial-era British and American pioneer settlers in what is now the U.S. state of Florida; the term is also applied to their descendants, to the present day, and their subculture among white Southerners. The first cracke ...

subculture, Burt was a longtime trustee of the

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (August 8, 1896 – December 14, 1953)
accessed December 8, 2014. was an

Society – an organization that celebrated the life and work of the Pulitzer Prize–winning

novelist A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living writing novels and other fiction, while others asp ...

who gave the Crackers dignity in American literature. He lived for many years in the picturesque historic town of

Melrose, Florida Melrose is an unincorporated community in Alachua, Bradford, Clay, and Putnam counties in the U.S. state of Florida. It lies on State Road 26, approximately east of Gainesville (straight-line distance) and approximately southwest of Jacksonvi ...

, until declining health dictated a move to the larger city of

Jacksonville Jacksonville is a city located on the Atlantic coast of northeast Florida, the most populous city proper in the state and is the List of United States cities by area, largest city by area in the contiguous United States as of 2020. It is the co ...

not long before his death.

Education

Burt graduated from the

University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications The College of Journalism and Communications is an academic college of the University of Florida. The centerpiece of the journalism programs at UF is WUFT, which consists of both a WUFT (TV) Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) Public television a ...

in 1949. He wrote for the student newspaper '' Independent Florida Alligator'' when he was attending UF as an undergraduate. A
index of the interview
is available. His extensive papers are in the Special Collections Department of the University of Florida's Smathers Library.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Burt, Al Florida cracker culture University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications alumni 1927 births 2008 deaths