Ralph Ellison

• Born: March 1, 1914
• Birthplace: Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
• Died: April 16, 1994
• Place of death: New York, New York

Writer

Best known for his novel Invisible Man, which is frequently hailed as a masterpiece of world literature, Ellison also became known for his opposition to black nationalism and radicalism and for connecting African American culture to the larger Western culture.

Area of achievement: Literature

Early Life

Ralph Waldo Ellison was born in Oklahoma City in 1914. His father, Lewis, the son of a former slave in South Carolina, died when Ralph was three, leaving him to be raised in poverty by his mother, Ida. Named for the nineteenth century writer Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ellison was interested in the arts from an early age. At first, his focus was on music. He played the trumpet and thought of becoming a composer. Attending the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama beginning in 1933, he initially specialized in music and played in the school band, Only later did he become interested in literature. He also developed interests in sculpture, drawing, and photography.

After leaving Tuskegee in 1936 without earning a degree, Ellison traveled to New York City, where he met the noted African American writers Langston Hughes and Richard Wright, both of whom encouraged his writing and also influenced him to become active in left-wing politics. He became associated with the Communist Party and wrote reviews and essays for its journal, New Masses. He also tried his hand at fiction and published his first story, an excerpt from a never-completed novel, in 1939.

During World War II, Ellison wrote several short stories and essays, served in the Merchant Marines, and drifted away from the Communist Party. In 1945, while vacationing in New England, he first got the idea for what became his masterpiece, Invisible Man. In 1946, having divorced his first wife, Rose Poindexter, he married Fanny McConnell Buford, who helped support him until his eventual literary success gave him a secure income.

Life’s Work

Even before beginning work on Invisible Man, Ellison had received offers to publish a novel. His stories and essays had won him praise, and he began to carve out a niche for himself on matters related to the situation of African Americans. From the time he dissociated himself from the Communist Party until the end of his life, Ellison promoted the view that despite the oppression they had suffered, African Americans were not mere victims. Moreover, he said African American writers should not restrict themselves to writing protest literature full of anger and should certainly not separate themselves from the larger American culture, but should integrate into it, draw on it and the larger European heritage, and celebrate the African American contribution to it in all its forms, including jazz, blues, and folklore.

Ellison’s approach earned him some criticism from African Americans, especially during the Black Power era of the 1960’s and 1970’s, but he held to his views, avoided overt political commentary, and insisted that he was a writer first and an African American second. When Invisible Man appeared in 1952, after the publication of some excerpts in magazines as early as 1947, he found himself much in demand, especially in white literary circles, as someone who could comment on race relations, though he preferred discussing literature.

In 1953, Invisible Man won the prestigious National Book Award, and over the succeeding years it was frequently hailed as a masterpiece and as the most important novel in the postwar period. The acclaim led to speaking engagements at college campuses around the country, a European lecture tour, and a Prix de Rome fellowship, which Ellison held for two years, beginning in 1955, during which time he worked on a new novel.

The new novel occupied Ellison for the rest of his life, but although he published eight excerpts from it over two decades and wrote thousands of pages of manuscript, he never finished it. An edited version was published posthumously in 1999 under the title Juneteenth. Ellison did publish two nonfiction books in the decades after Invisible Man: the essay collections Shadow and Act (1964) and Going to the Territory (1986). In producing these essays, he established himself as a respected commentator on literature and culture and the role of African Americans.

In his later years, Ellison continued to accumulate honors, including several honorary degrees, and held teaching positions at various American colleges, including Bard, Yale, and New York University. He served on many governmental bodies and commissions, including the commission that led to the creation of public television, often as the only African American among white notables. He lived to see Invisible Man become an assigned text at universities, and after the conflicts of the 1960’s it came to be seen as an inspiration to a new generation of African American writers and intellectuals.

Even after his death from pancreatic cancer in 1994, Ellison continued to attract attention. Several new collections of academic articles and two major biographies appeared over the next fifteen years, and the criticisms of him made by radicals and Black Nationalists in the 1960’s came under scrutiny, with some commentators arguing that Ellison was more truly political and more reflective of the African American community than his critics had been.

Significance

Ellison is known above all for his novel Invisible Man, an expression of the African American experience and a depiction of universal themes that has been hailed as an important work of world literature. He also is known for resisting black nationalism and for being an important representative of the view that African American culture made a complex and important contribution to American culture as a whole. His literary and cultural essays established him as a leading cultural critic on par with T. S. Eliot.

Bibliography

Ellison, Ralph. The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison. Edited by John F. Callahan. New York: Modern Library, 1995. Reprints the essays in the two books of essays published in Ellison’s lifetime (Shadow and Act and Going to the Territory), along with other previously uncollected writings.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Invisible Man. Reprint. New York: Modern Library, 1994. Includes an introduction by Ellison written in 1981.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Juneteenth: A Novel. Edited by John F. Callahan. New York: Random House, 1999. The posthumous edition was constructed by Callahan from Ellison’s manuscripts.

Hill, Michael D., and Lena M. Hill. Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man: A Reference Guide. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2008. A study of various aspects of the novel, including a summary of the story, an examination of the composition of the novel, an overview of the responses to the novel, an analysis of its themes, and a discussion of its cultural and historical background.

Jackson, Lawrence. Ralph Ellison: Emergence of Genius. New York: Wiley, 2002. Detailed study of Ellison’s early years, up to the publication of Invisible Man.

Posnock, Ross, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Ralph Ellison. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2005. New approaches to Ellison, presenting him as a more political figure and exploring previously neglected aspects of his work.

Rampersad, Arnold. Ralph Ellison: A Biography. New York: Knopf, 2007. A major study providing full details of Ellison’s life, though at times unduly negative.