Ralph Ellison

Ralph Ellison (Ralph Waldo Ellison), 1914-94, African-American author, b. Oklahoma City, Okla.; studied Tuskegee Inst. (now Tuskegee Univ.). Originally a trumpet player and aspiring composer, he moved (1936) to New York City, where he met Langston Hughes , who became his mentor, and became friends with Richard Wright , who radicalized his thinking. Ellison's earliest published writings were reviews and stories in the politically radical New Masses magazine. His literary reputation rests almost completely on one novel, Invisible Man (1952). A classic of American literature, it draws upon the author's experiences to detail the harrowing progress of a nameless young black man struggling to live in a hostile society. Ellison also published two collections of essays, Shadow and Act (1964) and Going to the Territory (1986). His collected essays were published in 1995, and a volume of stories appeared in 1996. For many years Ellison struggled with the writing of a second novel, sections of which appeared (1960-77) in magazines, but it was still uncompleted at his death. Condensing the sprawling mass of text and notes written over four decades, his literary executor assembled the novel Juneteenth, which was published in 1999.

Bibliography: See R. G. O'Meally, ed., Living with Music: Ralph Ellison's Jazz Writings (2001); biographies by L. Jackson (2002) and A. Rampersad (2007); studies by J. Hersey, ed. (1974), R. G. O'Meally (1980), A. Nadel (1988), M. Busby (1991), E. Schor (1993), J. G. Watts (1995), H, Bytkerm ed, (2000), H. Bloom, ed. (2003), K. W. Warren (2003), S. C. Tracy, ed. (2004), and J. S. Wright (2006).

Ellison, Ralph (1914–1994), novelist and essayist.Born in Oklahoma City, the grandson of slaves, Ralph Waldo Ellison played trumpet as a youth and later studied composition at Tuskegee Institution. In 1936, after his junior year there, he moved to New York City to study sculpture. A friendship with Richard Wright turned him to writing. From 1938 to World War II he worked on the Works Progress Administration's Federal Writers' Project and contributed reviews, essays, and short fiction to New Masses, The Negro Quarterly (which he edited for a time), and other periodicals. After service in the Merchant Marine (1942–1945), he held various jobs, including work as a freelance photographer. After a brief first marriage, he married Fanny McConnell in 1946; for more than forty years, they lived in Harlem.

Ellison's novel Invisible Man (1952) won the National Book Award and has since grown in critical esteem and popularity. Displaying a mastery of language, symbolism, and allegory, and a humane sensibility, it brilliantly probes the African‐American experience and American racial dynamics. After a fellowship at the American Academy in Rome (1955–1957), Ellison taught and lectured at several institutions, including Bard College, Yale, and Harvard. Excerpts from his unfinished second novel appeared in various literary magazines in the 1960s, and a version was published posthumously in 1999 as Juneteenth. Ellison's essays and interviews appeared in Shadow and Act (1964), Going to the Territory (1986), and the posthumous Collected Essays (1995) and his short fiction in Flying Home and Other Stories (1996).

Stubbornly committed to a vision of American life and culture rooted in complexity, diversity, and possibility, Ellison criticized some African Americans' tendencies to view their “relationship to American literature in a negative way.” As a novelist, he said, he felt the same “personal responsibility for democracy” that he found in “our classic 19th‐century novels.” He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969.

Bibliography

Kimberly W. Benston, ed., Speaking for You: The Vision of Ralph Ellison, 1987.
Mark Busby , Ralph Ellison, 1992.
Ralph Ellison , The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison, ed. John F. Callahan, 1995.
Ralph Ellison , Conversations with Ralph Ellison, eds. Maryemma Graham and Amritjit Singh, 1995.

John F. Callahan