Ralph Waldo Ellison -------- Renaissance Men

Education is all a matter of building bridges.

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.

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.

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 men

.......Theoretically, theirs was a "classless" society, 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 nigggeer."

The quality of justice and equality in this country is still gauged by our condition.

Ralph Ellison

“When I discover who I am, I'll be free.”

“The act of writing requires a constant plunging back into the shadow of the past where time hovers ghostlike.”

“America is woven of many strands.

I would recognize them and let it so remain. Our fate is to become one, and yet many.

This is not prophecy, but description.”

Ralph Ellison

“I remember that I'm invisible and walk softly so as not awake the sleeping ones. Sometimes it is best not to awaken them; there are few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers.”

“And the mind that has conceived a plan of living must never lose sight of the chaos against which that pattern was conceived. That goes for societies as well as for individuals.”

“Whence all this passion towards conformity anyway?

Diversity is the word. Let man keep his many parts and you will have no tyrant states.

Why, if they follow this conformity business, they'll end up by forcing me, an invisible man, to become white, which is not a color but the lack of one.

Must I strive towards colorlessness? But seriously and without snobbery, think of what the world would lose if that should happen. America is woven of many strands. I would recognize them and let it so remain.”

Ralph Ellison

“Our white is so white you can paint a chunka coal and you’d have to crack it open with a sledge hammer to prove it wasn’t white clear through.”

"... the cast-iron figure of a very black, red-lipped and wide-mouthed Negro . . . stared up at me from the floor,
his face an enormous grin, his single large black hand held palm up before his chest.

It was a bank, a piece of early Americana, the kind of bank which, if a coin is placed in the hand and a lever pressed upon the back, will raise its arm and flip the coin into the grinning mouth......"

Ralph Waldo Ellison

Hibernation is a covert preparation for a more overt action.

When I discover who I am, I'll be free.

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.

Had the price of looking been blindness, I would have looked.

The understanding of art depends finally upon one's willingness to extend one's humanity and one's knowledge of human life.

If the word has the potency to revive and make us free, it has also the power to blind, imprison, and destroy.

The act of writing requires a constant plunging back into the shadow of the past where time hovers ghostlike.

I am not ashamed of my grandparents for having been slaves. I am only ashamed of myself for having at one time being ashamed.

Ralph Waldo Ellison

Ralph Ellison's landmark novel, 'Invisible Man,' published April 14, 1952

Invisible Man is a novel by Ralph Ellison about an African-American man whose color renders him invisible.

It addresses many of the social and intellectual issues facing African Americans .....

issues of individuality and personal identity.

Equal parts poetic and scathing, 'Invisible Man' explores an unnamed man's search for identity in a

society largely hostile to the presence of African Americans .....