Ralph Ellison and Invisible Man
Commentary by Black Kos editor Deoliver47
Had he lived Ralph Ellison would be 97 years old today. Author of one of the greatest American novels, "Invisible Man", published in 1952, his work and words continue to resonate with us.
"''I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids - and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me."
Pungent words which serve to highlight the status of black people in America, who are a key part of the fabric and very foundations of this nation, yet who remain outside observing the white world as if invisible to all except themselves.
A brief biography:
Ralph Waldo Ellison was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Lewis Ellison, his father, named his son after the famous American poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, telling that he was "raising this boy up to be a poet." Lewis, who had spent his youth as a soldier and as an entrepreneur, was a vendor of ice and coal; he died accidentally. Ellison admired his father greatly, seeing him as a hero. His mother, Ida Ellison, supported herself and her children by working as a domestic. Ida, whom close friends called "Brownie," believed in Socialism and was arrested several times for violating the segregation orders. While growing up, Ellison began performing on the trumpet during high school years. Among his friends were the blues singer Jimmy Rushing and trumpeter Hot Lips Page. With the help of a music scholarship, Ellison studied at the Tuskegee Institute in Macon County, Alabama (1933-1936). However, the atmosphere in Tuskegee was conservative and jazz was considered primitive. Ellison dropped out to pursue a career in the visual arts.
Ellison moved to New York City to study sculpture, but again abandoned his plans when a change meetings with Langston Hughes and Richard Wright led him to join Federal Writers' Project. He had earlier read the works of Ernest Hemingway, George Bernard Shaw, and T.S. Eliot, which impressed him deeply. Encouraged by Richard Wright he started to write essays, reviews and short stories for various periodicals. Ellison's stories appeared in New Masses and other publications. He became an editor of the Negro Quarterly and started to work on his novel. In 1946 he married Fanny McConnell. During WW II Ellison served from 1943 to 1945 in the Merchant Marines as a cook, and wrote the first line of Invisible Man after the war ended. The early version started with a story about a black American pilot who is in a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp, but soon Ellison found a more complex theme. "Once the book was done, it was suggested that the title would be confused with H.G. Wells' old novel, The Invisible Man, but I fought to keep my title because that's what the book was about.'' (Ellison in The New York Times, March 1, 1982) After this work, Ellison published two collections of essays. His pieces on jazz drew on his experience as a musician and advocated the idea that in modern society musical traditions blend rapidly with each other. In a writing published in High Fidelity (1955) Ellison remarked that "The step from the spirituality of the spirituals to that of the Beethoven of the symphonies or the Bach of the chorales is not as vast as it seems".
Ellison lectured widely at various American colleges and universities, including Bard, Columbia, Rutgers, Yale, Chicago, and New York University, where he was Albert Schweitzer professor in the Humanities. Among Ellison's several awards are the Medal of Freedom (1969), Chevalier de l'Ordre des Artes et Lettres (1970). He received a fellowship to the National American Academy of Arts and Letters in Rome (1955-57), and was elected a vice-president of the American P.E.N. (1964), and a vice-president of the National Institute of Arts and Letters (1967). Ellison received in 1985 National Medal of Arts for Invisible Man and for his teaching at numerous universities.
In 1953 he won the National Book award for fiction and said this in his acceptance speech:
To see America with an awareness of its rich diversity and its almost magical fluidity and freedom I was forced to conceive of a novel unburdened by the narrow naturalism which has led after so many triumphs to the final and unrelieved despair which marks so much of our current fiction. I was to dream of a prose which was flexible, and swift as American change is swift, confronting the inequalities and brutalities of our society forthrightly, but yet thrusting forth its images of hope, human fraternity, and individual self-realization. A prose which would make use of the richness of our speech, the idiomatic expression, and the rhetorical flourishes from past periods which are still alive among us. Despite my personal failures there must be possible a fiction which , leaving sociology and case histories to the scientists, can arrive at the truth about the human condition, here and now, with all the bright magic of the fairy tale.
He was the subject of a documentary aired by the PBS American Masters series, which was interesting in that it included the first visual dramatization of his work.
Filmmaker Avon Kirkland discussed this in an interview:
Q: (interrupting) Never mind...You and your staff were the first ever to adapt scenes from INVISIBLE MAN to film and excerpts are included in the documentary. Why wasn't the entire book ever made into a movie?
AK: After seeing his friend Richard Wright's great novel, NATIVE SON, so poorly adapted in an early 1950's foreign production, Ellison apparently wanted to protect the integrity of his great work. He certainly received dozens of offers for the movie rights to the book. The celebrated director Sidney Lumet (The Pawnbroker, many others) was especially interested in optioning the book as early as the 1960's, as was media mogul Quincy Jones around 1990. And even the well-known cinema verité documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman inquired about the rights in the 1970's while he was still a practicing attorney in Boston.
Years after his death, academics and critics are still debating Ellison, and his place in both American literary history and the black community. An interview he did with Ishmael Reed in 1977 offers interesting insights on his perspective on critics and on racism and social class:
This excerpt begins with Mr. Ellison's comment on Mr. Reed's observation that some white critics and intellectuals adopt an air of cultural superiority when they examine works by black artists.
Ralph Ellison: Looked at historically, there is no question but that this society started out with a divided mind, if not with a divided conscience. Its founders asserted the noble idea of creating a free, open society while retaining slavery, a system in direct contradiction to their rhetorically inclusive concept of freedom. thus, from the beginning, racism has mocked the futuristic dream of democracy. The people who won their revolution by throwing the British off their backs and who declared that they were rejecting the hierarchical divisions of the past in the name of democracy began with their experiment loaded down with hypocrisy and wrapped up to their wigs in facile self-righteousness. They declared themselves the new national identity, "American," but, as social beings they were still locked in the continuum of history, and as language-users they were still given to the ceaseless classifying and grading of everything from stars and doodle bugs to tints of skin and crinks of hair, they had to have a standard by which they could gauge the extent to which their theories of democracy were being made manifest, both in the structure of the new society and in the lives of its citizens.
Theoretically, theirs was a "classless" society, so what better (or easier) way of establishing such a standard than to say, "Well, now here we have all these easily identifiable blacks who're already below the threshold of social mobility -- why not use them? They're not even human by our standards, so why not exploit them as the zero point on our scale of social possibility? Why not designate to them the negative ground upon which our society shall realize its goals? By looking at their permanent, Bible-sanctioned condition any white man can easily measure his individual progress toward achieving the promises of democracy."
This is to telescope a hell of a lot of history and sociology, but you can see what I'm driving at. The poorest, least gifted of white men could say, "No matter how poor or miserable I am, I'm still better than a nigger." Or, if he saw himself slipping downward on the social scale, he could say, "Hey, I'm being forced down to the level of a nigger." "Nigger" took on social, economic and moral connotations which operate in areas far beyond that of race. It became a powerful principle of American social order. The quality of justice and equality in this country is still gauged by our condition.
For those of you who live in or near New York City, or perhaps have plans to visit, there is a memorial to Ellison uptown in the place where he used to love to walk.
In 1998, the Ralph Ellison Memorial Committee was established to plan a memorial celebrating Ralph Ellison’s legacy in the neighborhood he loved. The Riverside Drive island at 150th Street was chosen as the site for the memorial. Ralph Ellison’s last and long-standing home at 730 Riverside Drive faces the site, and Ellison often strolled in this section of the Park. In 1998, the committee along with Riverside Park Fund sponsored a design competition for the project. The panel’s vote was unanimous in favor of the design submitted by Elizabeth Catlett. The Ralph Ellison Memorial Project is her first commissioned public work in New York City. The Invisible Man sculpture is a 15 foot high, 7 ½ foot wide, six inch thick slab of bronze featuring a cutout silhouette of a man. His struggle, Catlett suggests, is universal, genderless, and timeless. The artwork is the centerpiece of a restored area of Riverside Park, surrounded by a dramatic setting of dogwoods and azaleas from 149th to 153rd Street.
Catlett began work on the sculpture in the summer of 2001 and the sculpture was unveiled on May 1, 2003. Ralph Ellison’s widow, Fanny Ellison, who still lived at 730 Riverside Drive attended the ceremony, along with artist Elizabeth Catlett, Bill and Camille Cosby, actress Ruby Dee, Reverend Calvin Butts of the Abyssinian Baptist Church and many local politicians and residents of the Harlem community. Benches in memory of Ms. Catlett’s husband, Mexican artist Francisco Mora, and in tribute to former City Council member Stanley Michels, who allocated the majority of City funding for the memorial, were also unveiled that day.
memorial sculpture by Elizabeth Catlett
Ellison spoke of Harlem when he testified before a Senate committee in 1966:
Senators Hear a Negro Praise Harlem
Mr. Ellison, who lives in Washington Heights on the fringe of Harlem, dismissed the idea that the Negro "wants to break out of Harlem" and "invade the white neighborhoods."
The Negro, he said, wants to "transform Harlem and the other Harlems across the country."
"These places are precious to him, for that's where he dreams, where he loves," he declared. Mr. Ellison, however, defended recent Negro marches into white neighborhoods in Chicago and elsewhere, protests designed to topple housing patterns.
"Anyone should be able to march anywhere in protest," he said. "This is guaranteed to us. Even the Nazi Party should be protected if it marches into Harlem." The important thing, he said, "is to know you're not being discriminated against in the abstract."
Then, smiling broadly, Mr. Ellison suggested that the Negro "might be exercising very poor taste" if he chose to move into some of the suburban neighborhoods in which the marches have taken place. He also suggested that it was time to dismiss the cliches and myths about the Negro and to start treating him as an individual.
"The impression seems to be that what's wrong with the American city is the Negro," he said. "Actually, what's wrong with the Negro is what we've done to the American city."
Quotes
"Eclecticism is the word. Like a jazz musician who creates his own style out of the styles around him, I play by ear."
"Education is all a matter of building bridges."
"I am not ashamed of my grandparents for having been slaves. I am only ashamed of myself for having at one time being ashamed. "
"Some people are your relatives but others are your ancestors, and you choose the ones you want to have as ancestors. You create yourself out of those values. "
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences awarded Andrew Young with the Trustees Lifetime Achievement Emmy on Friday night for being one of the first to integrate television with his Peabody-award-winning series, Look Up and Live. AOL Black Voices: Andrew Young Talks Television, World Powers and the Purpose of Journalism
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Harry Belafonte, Hank Aaron and Dan Rather were among the many stars who attended the event. Maya Angelou, who narrated the ceremony along with Sidney Poiter, paid tribute to Young and his dedication to equal rights.
"Long before he transformed Atlanta, long before he was United Nations Ambassador, long before he was elected Georgia's first black Congressman since Reconstruction, even before he met Dr. Martin L. King Jr. and set out to redeem the very fabric of this country through a campaign of non-violent social change, before all that, Andrew Young got his start in television," Angelou said.
Andrew Young with former NYC mayor David Dinkins (Getty Images)
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Residents of Djenné, Mali, a Unesco World Heritage site, complain that the guidelines to maintain that designation are too restrictive. NYT: Mali City Rankled by Rules for Life in Spotlight
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Abba Maiga stood in his dirt courtyard, smoking and seething over the fact that his 150-year-old mud-brick house is so culturally precious he is not allowed to update it — no tile floors, no screen doors, no shower.
“Who wants to live in a house with a mud floor?” groused Mr. Maiga, a retired riverboat captain.
With its cone-shaped crenellations and palm wood drainage spouts, the grand facade seems outside time and helps illustrate why this ancient city in eastern Mali is an official World Heritage site.
But the guidelines established by Unesco, the cultural arm of the United Nations, which compiles the heritage list, demand that any reconstruction not substantially alter the original.
“When a town is put on the heritage list, it means nothing should change,” Mr. Maiga said. “But we want development, more space, new appliances — things that are much more modern. We are angry about all that.”
It is a cultural clash echoed at World Heritage sites across Africa and around the world. While it may be good for tourism, residents complain of being frozen in time like pieces in a museum — their lives proscribed so visitors can gawk.
Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
As a World Heritage site, Djenné, Mali, must preserve its mud-brick buildings, from the Great Mosque, in the background, to individual homes.
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N-A-T-U-R-A-L CNN: Bronner Bros. show highlights natural hair
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There were plenty of Crayola-colored wigs and long, silky extensions displayed at the 64th annual Bronner Bros. International Hair Show, which drew more than 60,000 stylists, hair enthusiasts and exhibitors who work with black hair this past weekend.
Yet against the backdrop of energetic hip-hop music and among the booths stocked with glossy tubs of chemical relaxers, some black women went back to basics: They wore their own natural hair.
That might be seem like an unexpected trend, with music artists such as Beyonce and Nicki Minaj sporting bright wigs and extensions. Wigs, weaves and relaxers are indeed big business. In 2006, black hair care products including relaxers, shampoos and hair accessories for weaves totaled $1.8 billion, according to The Hunter-Miller Group Inc., a market research group specializing in African-American issues.
But going natural, say several stylists and experts, is making a comeback.
There were education sessions for women who were curious about styling their natural curls in courses titled "Innovative Styling for Natural and Locked Hair" and "The Art of Natural Hair."
Several booths featured organic shampoos and styling tools for customers, many of whom stopped using chemical products after experiencing negative side effects such as hair loss or burns. Bronner Bros. is a family-owned black hair care product empire based in Marietta, Georgia.
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Some history books try to tell a story. Others try to turn history upside down, challenging preconceived notions about winners and losers. American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt does the latter. The Root: The Untold Story of One of America's Largest Slave Revolts
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Some history books try to tell a story. Others try to turn those stories on their heads, breaking apart what has been accepted as truth in the process. Daniel Rasmussen's American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt (Harper) tries to do the latter.
Through his account of the little-known 1811 Louisiana slave rebellion, the 24-year-old recent Harvard grad challenges popular narratives of docile and simple slaves who seldom engaged in subversive activity to gain freedom. He does this by repositioning slave struggles in larger intellectual and political movements of the era. He also wreaks havoc on that well-worn archetype of the tragic mulatto.
About the Louisiana rebellion, American historians generally have agreed on a few things: In the middle of the night on Jan. 8, 1811, a small group of slaves entered the bedroom of plantation owner Manuel Andry in his German Coast, La., home. After slaves slung a few axes and other domestic weapons, a wounded Andry managed to escape, but his son did not. The slaves then quickly seized arms and marched to New Orleans, picking up fighters along the way as whites fled in fear. The revolt, however, was quickly put down by a local militia.
That's where the story splits. The official storyline that then-Louisiana Gov. William C.C. Claiborne pushed and that most historians have accepted was that the slaves were a simple band of "brigands" out to pillage and plunder. The quick suppression and subsequent un-due process in the courts proved a testament to the power of American legality in the wake of the Louisiana Purchase.
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By The Numbers: Huffington Post: Health Inequalities From Economics And Race
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People have long known that health in the U.S. is not an equal thing. But now, thanks to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), there are numbers to prove it.
The first-ever "Health Disparites and Inequalities Report" shows startling differences in things like national mortality rates, behavioral risk factors and access to health care across various economic and racial groups in the U.S. According to the CDC, the goal is to now use the compiled data as benchmark for future progress. Additionally, by quantifying and highlighting major health disparities, the CDC hopes to inspire action and "facilitate accountability."
Some of the starkest findings of the report center around the dramatic disparities between high- and low-income Americans. Low-income residents report up to 11 fewer "healthy" days per month than their high-income counterparts. Also notable: Preventable hospitilzation rates increase greatly as income decreases.
If there were no disparities in this area, the CDC estimates that the U.S. would save $6.7 billion in health care costs every year.
Other parts of the study focused on cataloging health outcomes and access to health care according to race. Hypertension, for example, is more prevalent in non-Hispanic blacks (42 percent) than whites (28.8 percent). Non-Hispanic blacks also have the highest prevalence of obesity, while whites have higher rates of suicide. African-American infants are up to three times more likely to die than infants born to women of other ethnicities.
Thomas Frieden, director of the CDC, said that the report, while significant, is very much a first step.
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Voices and Soul
by Justice Putnam
Black Kos Tuesday's Chile, Poetry Editor
When I was in my mid-twenties and a young family man, I began teaching High School History and English. To make ends meet, since teaching has never paid enough, especially for those starting out in the profession; I worked part-time as an ER/ICU orderly at St Jude's Hospital in Fullerton, California.
I didn't have the constitution that my sister, Zona had, who put in 25 years as an RN in pediatric oncology at Children's Hospital in Orange, California. The devastated, broken bodies; the wailing of family members who learned of their loved one's prognosis of a short but painful demise as the result of their injuries was bad enough. What proved too much for me to handle was seeing the many young men and women of color dying on the gurneys I pushed; the young mexican farm-worker knifed in the jugular from a drunken brawl; the young black kid, his arm blown off from the blast of a 12-gauge; the young American Indian girl bleeding from a botched, self-induced abortion; all that weighed heavily on me and for my own psychological well-being, I quit after six months of employment there.
I ended up giving up my teaching "career" as well, because of the notorious low pay; and went on to work many jobs in many fields since. But my time at St Jude's has haunted me and will continue to haunt me, until my own lonely demise.
So it goes.
ICU
Those mornings I traveled north on I91,
passing below the basalt cliff of East Rock
where the elms discussed their genealogies.
I was a chaplain at Hartford Hospital,
took the Myers-Briggs with Sister Margaret,
learned I was an I drawn to Es.
In small group I said, “I do not like it—
the way so many young black men die here
unrecognized, their gurneys stripped,
their belongings catalogued and unclaimed.”
On the neonatal ICU, newborns breathed,
blue, spider-delicate in a nest of tubes.
A Sunday of themselves, their tissue purpled,
their eyelids the film on old water in a well,
their faces resigned in their see-through attics,
their skin mottled mildewed wallpaper.
It is correct to love even at the wrong time.
On rounds, the newborns eyed me, each one
like Orpheus in his dark hallway, saying:
I knew I would find you, I knew I would lose you.
-- Spencer Reece
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