Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Cross References
- Entries
- Abbott, Robert S.
- Abele, Julian F.
- Affirmative Action
- Africa
- African Blood Brotherhood (ABB)
- Afro-American Studies
- Agriculture
- AIDS
- Ali, Muhammad
- Allen, Richard
- American Revolution
- Anderson, Marian
- Angelou, Maya
- Anticommunism
- Antilynching Campaign
- Antislavery Movement
- Antiterror Wars
- Apartheid
- Architecture
- Art
- Ashe, Arthur R.
- Associated Negro Press (ANP)
- Atlanta Compromise (1895)
- Back-to-Africa Movement
- Baker, Ella J.
- Baker v. Carr (1962)
- Bakke v. Board of Regents of California (1978)
- Baldwin, James
- Barnett, Claude A.
- Bates, Daisy L.
- Bethune, Mary McLeod
- Birth of a Nation, The (1915)
- Black Arts Movement
- Black Belt
- Black Bourgeoisie (1957)
- Black Manifesto (1969)
- Black Nationalism
- Black Panther Party (BPP)
- Black Power Movement
- Black Towns
- Bloody Sunday
- Bond, Horace M.
- Bond, Julian
- Bouchet, Edward A.
- Brooke, Edward W.
- Brooks, Gwendolyn E.
- Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP)
- Brown, Charlotte Hawkins
- Brown, James N. (Jim)
- Brown v. Board of Education (1954)
- Buchanan v. Warley (1917)
- Buffalo Soldiers
- Bunche, Ralph J.
- Business
- Caesar, Shirley
- Capitalism
- Carmichael, Stokely (Kwame Turé)
- Carver, George Washington
- Chesnutt, Charles W.
- Children's Defense Fund (CDF)
- Chisholm, Shirley A.
- Cities
- Civil Rights Act of 1957
- Civil Rights Act of 1964
- Civil Rights Act of 1968
- Civil Rights Movement (CRM)
- Civil War
- Clark, Kenneth B.
- Clark, Septima P.
- Clubs
- Cold War
- Colonialism
- Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
- Constitution, US (1789)
- Conventions, National Negro
- Convict-Lease System
- Cooper, Anna Julia
- Cosby, William H. (Bill)
- Dance
- Davis, Angela Y.
- Davis, W. Allison
- Death Penalty
- Delany, Martin R.
- DePriest, Oscar S.
- Desegregation
- Divine, Father (George Baker)
- Douglass, Frederick
- Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)
- Drew, Charles R.
- Du Bois, W. E. B.
- Durham Manifesto (1942)
- Education
- Ellison, Ralph
- Emancipation
- Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)
- Evers, Medgar W.
- Executive Order 9981 (1948)
- Exodusters
- Family
- Farmer, James L.
- Farrakhan, Louis A.
- Feminism
- Film
- Fisher, Miles Mark
- Foreign Affairs
- “Forty Acres and a Mule”
- Four Freedoms
- Franklin, Aretha L.
- Franklin, John Hope
- Fraternal Orders and Lodges
- Fraternities
- Free African Society (FAS)
- Free Blacks
- Freedmen's Bank
- Freedmen's Bureau
- Freedom Rides
- Freedom Summer
- Freedom Train
- Fugitive Slave Act (1850)
- Garvey, Marcus M.
- Ghetto
- G. I. Bill (1944)
- Gibson, Althea
- Gospel of Freedom
- Graves, Earl G.
- Great Depression
- Great Migration
- Haitian Revolution
- Hall, Prince
- Hamer, Fannie Lou
- Hampton–Tuskegee Idea
- Hancock, Gordon B.
- Handy, William C. (W. C.)
- Harlem Renaissance
- Harris, Abram L.
- Hastie, William H.
- Height, Dorothy I.
- Higginbotham, H. Leon
- Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs)
- Hope, John
- Horne, Lena M.
- Houston, Charles H.
- Hughes, Langston
- Humphrey–Hawkins Bill (1976)
- Immigration
- Indentured Servitude
- Indian Wars
- Institute of the Black World (IBW)
- Interracial Relations
- Jackson, Jesse L.
- Jackson, Luther P.
- Jackson, Mahalia
- Jackson, Michael J.
- Jacobs, Harriet A.
- Jemison, Mae C.
- Jobs Campaigns
- John Brown's Raid
- John Henryism
- Johnson, John A. (Jack)
- Johnson, John H.
- Johnson, Sargent C.
- Jordan, Barbara C.
- Jordan, Michael J.
- Journalism
- Journey of Reconciliation (1947)
- Just, Ernest E.
- Justice, US Department of
- Katzenbach v. McClung (1964)
- Kerner Report
- King, Martin Luther, Jr.
- Korean War
- Ku Klux Klan (KKK)
- Kwanzaa
- Labor
- Law Enforcement
- Lawson, James M.
- Lee, Shelton J. (Spike)
- Letter from Birmingham Jail (1963)
- Lewis, Edmonia
- Lewis, John R.
- Lewis, Reginald F.
- “Lift Every Voice and Sing”
- Literature
- Little (X), Malcolm
- Little Rock Crisis
- Louis, Joe
- Loving v. Virginia (1967)
- Mandela, Nelson R.
- Manumission
- March on Washington (1963)
- March on Washington Movement (MOWM)
- Marshall, Thurgood
- Massive Resistance
- Mays, Benjamin E.
- McCoy, Elijah J.
- McKissick, Floyd B.
- McKissick v. Carmichael (1951)
- Medicine
- Micheaux, Oscar
- Military
- Milliken v. Bradley (1974)
- Minorities, Racial and Ethnic
- Miscegenation
- Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP)
- Mitchell, Clarence M.
- Montgomery Bus Boycott
- Moore, Harry T.
- Morgan v. Virginia (1946)
- Morrison, Toni
- Moseley-Braun, Carol
- Motley, Constance Baker
- Moynihan Report
- Muhammad, Elijah
- Multiculturalism
- Murray, Pauli
- Music
- Nation of Islam (NOI)
- National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
- National Association of Black Social Workers (NABSW)
- National Association of Colored Women (NACW)
- National Council of Negro Women (NCNW)
- National Urban League (NUL)
- Négritude
- Negro History Movement
- New Left
- New Negro Movement
- Niagara Movement
- Norris v. Alabama (1935)
- Obama, Barack H.
- Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity)
- Owens, James C. (Jesse)
- Pan-African Movement
- Parks, Gordon
- Parks, Rosa L.
- Persian Gulf War
- Philanthropy
- Photography
- Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
- Politics
- Port Chicago Mutiny (1944)
- Poverty
- Powell, Adam Clayton, Jr.
- Powell, Colin L.
- Race Labels
- Race Man/Woman
- Randolph, A. Philip
- Reconstruction (1865–77)
- Redistricting
- Religion
- Resegregation
- Rice, Condoleeza
- Robeson, Paul
- Robinson, Jack R. (Jackie)
- Roots
- Rosenwald Schools
- Rustin, Bayard T.
- Scholarship
- Science
- Segregation
- Share Croppers’ Union (SCU)
- Sharecropping
- Shaw v. Reno (1993)
- Sit-ins
- Slavery
- Smith v. Allwright (1944)
- Societies, Mutual Aid
- Sororities
- Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
- Southern Negro Youth Congress (SNYC)
- Spanish-American War
- Spaulding, Charles C.
- Sports
- State Convention of Colored Men of Texas (1883)
- Student Activism
- Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
- Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education (1971)
- Sweatt v. Painter (1950)
- Talented Tenth
- Technology
- Television
- Temperance Movement
- Terrell, Mary Church
- Theatre
- Thomas, Clarence
- Thurman, Howard
- TransAfrica
- Truth, Sojourner
- Tubman, Harriet R.
- Tuskegee Experiment
- Tuskegee Machine
- Underground Railroad
- United Negro College Fund (UNCF)
- Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA)
- Vietnam War
- Violence, Racial
- Voter Education Project (VEP)
- Voting Rights Act of 1965
- Wagner Act (1935)
- Walker, Alice
- Walker, David
- Walker, Madam C. J.
- Walker, Maggie Lena
- Washington, Booker T.
- Weaver, Robert C.
- Welfare
- Wells-Barnett, Ida B.
- Wheatley, Phillis
- White, Walter F.
- Wilder, L. Douglas
- Wilkins, Roy O.
- Williams, Robert F.
- Wilmington Ten
- Winfrey, Oprah G.
- Woods, Eldrick T. (Tiger)
- Woodson, Carter G.
- World War I
- World War II
- Wright, Richard
- Young, Andrew J.
- Young, Plummer B.
- Young, Whitney M.
- Index
- References
Ellison, Ralph
from Entries
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2016
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Cross References
- Entries
- Abbott, Robert S.
- Abele, Julian F.
- Affirmative Action
- Africa
- African Blood Brotherhood (ABB)
- Afro-American Studies
- Agriculture
- AIDS
- Ali, Muhammad
- Allen, Richard
- American Revolution
- Anderson, Marian
- Angelou, Maya
- Anticommunism
- Antilynching Campaign
- Antislavery Movement
- Antiterror Wars
- Apartheid
- Architecture
- Art
- Ashe, Arthur R.
- Associated Negro Press (ANP)
- Atlanta Compromise (1895)
- Back-to-Africa Movement
- Baker, Ella J.
- Baker v. Carr (1962)
- Bakke v. Board of Regents of California (1978)
- Baldwin, James
- Barnett, Claude A.
- Bates, Daisy L.
- Bethune, Mary McLeod
- Birth of a Nation, The (1915)
- Black Arts Movement
- Black Belt
- Black Bourgeoisie (1957)
- Black Manifesto (1969)
- Black Nationalism
- Black Panther Party (BPP)
- Black Power Movement
- Black Towns
- Bloody Sunday
- Bond, Horace M.
- Bond, Julian
- Bouchet, Edward A.
- Brooke, Edward W.
- Brooks, Gwendolyn E.
- Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP)
- Brown, Charlotte Hawkins
- Brown, James N. (Jim)
- Brown v. Board of Education (1954)
- Buchanan v. Warley (1917)
- Buffalo Soldiers
- Bunche, Ralph J.
- Business
- Caesar, Shirley
- Capitalism
- Carmichael, Stokely (Kwame Turé)
- Carver, George Washington
- Chesnutt, Charles W.
- Children's Defense Fund (CDF)
- Chisholm, Shirley A.
- Cities
- Civil Rights Act of 1957
- Civil Rights Act of 1964
- Civil Rights Act of 1968
- Civil Rights Movement (CRM)
- Civil War
- Clark, Kenneth B.
- Clark, Septima P.
- Clubs
- Cold War
- Colonialism
- Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
- Constitution, US (1789)
- Conventions, National Negro
- Convict-Lease System
- Cooper, Anna Julia
- Cosby, William H. (Bill)
- Dance
- Davis, Angela Y.
- Davis, W. Allison
- Death Penalty
- Delany, Martin R.
- DePriest, Oscar S.
- Desegregation
- Divine, Father (George Baker)
- Douglass, Frederick
- Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)
- Drew, Charles R.
- Du Bois, W. E. B.
- Durham Manifesto (1942)
- Education
- Ellison, Ralph
- Emancipation
- Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)
- Evers, Medgar W.
- Executive Order 9981 (1948)
- Exodusters
- Family
- Farmer, James L.
- Farrakhan, Louis A.
- Feminism
- Film
- Fisher, Miles Mark
- Foreign Affairs
- “Forty Acres and a Mule”
- Four Freedoms
- Franklin, Aretha L.
- Franklin, John Hope
- Fraternal Orders and Lodges
- Fraternities
- Free African Society (FAS)
- Free Blacks
- Freedmen's Bank
- Freedmen's Bureau
- Freedom Rides
- Freedom Summer
- Freedom Train
- Fugitive Slave Act (1850)
- Garvey, Marcus M.
- Ghetto
- G. I. Bill (1944)
- Gibson, Althea
- Gospel of Freedom
- Graves, Earl G.
- Great Depression
- Great Migration
- Haitian Revolution
- Hall, Prince
- Hamer, Fannie Lou
- Hampton–Tuskegee Idea
- Hancock, Gordon B.
- Handy, William C. (W. C.)
- Harlem Renaissance
- Harris, Abram L.
- Hastie, William H.
- Height, Dorothy I.
- Higginbotham, H. Leon
- Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs)
- Hope, John
- Horne, Lena M.
- Houston, Charles H.
- Hughes, Langston
- Humphrey–Hawkins Bill (1976)
- Immigration
- Indentured Servitude
- Indian Wars
- Institute of the Black World (IBW)
- Interracial Relations
- Jackson, Jesse L.
- Jackson, Luther P.
- Jackson, Mahalia
- Jackson, Michael J.
- Jacobs, Harriet A.
- Jemison, Mae C.
- Jobs Campaigns
- John Brown's Raid
- John Henryism
- Johnson, John A. (Jack)
- Johnson, John H.
- Johnson, Sargent C.
- Jordan, Barbara C.
- Jordan, Michael J.
- Journalism
- Journey of Reconciliation (1947)
- Just, Ernest E.
- Justice, US Department of
- Katzenbach v. McClung (1964)
- Kerner Report
- King, Martin Luther, Jr.
- Korean War
- Ku Klux Klan (KKK)
- Kwanzaa
- Labor
- Law Enforcement
- Lawson, James M.
- Lee, Shelton J. (Spike)
- Letter from Birmingham Jail (1963)
- Lewis, Edmonia
- Lewis, John R.
- Lewis, Reginald F.
- “Lift Every Voice and Sing”
- Literature
- Little (X), Malcolm
- Little Rock Crisis
- Louis, Joe
- Loving v. Virginia (1967)
- Mandela, Nelson R.
- Manumission
- March on Washington (1963)
- March on Washington Movement (MOWM)
- Marshall, Thurgood
- Massive Resistance
- Mays, Benjamin E.
- McCoy, Elijah J.
- McKissick, Floyd B.
- McKissick v. Carmichael (1951)
- Medicine
- Micheaux, Oscar
- Military
- Milliken v. Bradley (1974)
- Minorities, Racial and Ethnic
- Miscegenation
- Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP)
- Mitchell, Clarence M.
- Montgomery Bus Boycott
- Moore, Harry T.
- Morgan v. Virginia (1946)
- Morrison, Toni
- Moseley-Braun, Carol
- Motley, Constance Baker
- Moynihan Report
- Muhammad, Elijah
- Multiculturalism
- Murray, Pauli
- Music
- Nation of Islam (NOI)
- National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
- National Association of Black Social Workers (NABSW)
- National Association of Colored Women (NACW)
- National Council of Negro Women (NCNW)
- National Urban League (NUL)
- Négritude
- Negro History Movement
- New Left
- New Negro Movement
- Niagara Movement
- Norris v. Alabama (1935)
- Obama, Barack H.
- Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity)
- Owens, James C. (Jesse)
- Pan-African Movement
- Parks, Gordon
- Parks, Rosa L.
- Persian Gulf War
- Philanthropy
- Photography
- Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
- Politics
- Port Chicago Mutiny (1944)
- Poverty
- Powell, Adam Clayton, Jr.
- Powell, Colin L.
- Race Labels
- Race Man/Woman
- Randolph, A. Philip
- Reconstruction (1865–77)
- Redistricting
- Religion
- Resegregation
- Rice, Condoleeza
- Robeson, Paul
- Robinson, Jack R. (Jackie)
- Roots
- Rosenwald Schools
- Rustin, Bayard T.
- Scholarship
- Science
- Segregation
- Share Croppers’ Union (SCU)
- Sharecropping
- Shaw v. Reno (1993)
- Sit-ins
- Slavery
- Smith v. Allwright (1944)
- Societies, Mutual Aid
- Sororities
- Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
- Southern Negro Youth Congress (SNYC)
- Spanish-American War
- Spaulding, Charles C.
- Sports
- State Convention of Colored Men of Texas (1883)
- Student Activism
- Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
- Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education (1971)
- Sweatt v. Painter (1950)
- Talented Tenth
- Technology
- Television
- Temperance Movement
- Terrell, Mary Church
- Theatre
- Thomas, Clarence
- Thurman, Howard
- TransAfrica
- Truth, Sojourner
- Tubman, Harriet R.
- Tuskegee Experiment
- Tuskegee Machine
- Underground Railroad
- United Negro College Fund (UNCF)
- Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA)
- Vietnam War
- Violence, Racial
- Voter Education Project (VEP)
- Voting Rights Act of 1965
- Wagner Act (1935)
- Walker, Alice
- Walker, David
- Walker, Madam C. J.
- Walker, Maggie Lena
- Washington, Booker T.
- Weaver, Robert C.
- Welfare
- Wells-Barnett, Ida B.
- Wheatley, Phillis
- White, Walter F.
- Wilder, L. Douglas
- Wilkins, Roy O.
- Williams, Robert F.
- Wilmington Ten
- Winfrey, Oprah G.
- Woods, Eldrick T. (Tiger)
- Woodson, Carter G.
- World War I
- World War II
- Wright, Richard
- Young, Andrew J.
- Young, Plummer B.
- Young, Whitney M.
- Index
- References
Summary
Born: March 1, 1914, Oklahoma City, OK
Education: Tuskegee Institute, 1933–36
Died: April 16, 1994, New York, NY
A grandson of slaves, Ellison became one of the most significant writers in America. His Invisible Man earned the 1953 National Book Award. In 1965 a Book Week Magazine poll of 200 critics declared it “the most distinguished American novel written since World War II.”
Ellison's road to that achievement began in a poverty-stricken childhood. A bookish boy who hoped to study music, he achieved scholastically and won a state scholarship to Tuskegee Institute, where he studied literature and sculpture in addition to music. Dispirited by tuition problems and Jim Crow, he withdrew and moved to New York City. There he found work and met Richard Wright, who encouraged him to write. He then published dozens of articles and stories. He also joined the Merchant Marine and, once while out on sick leave, wrote a single sentence: “I am an invisible man.” Seven years later he had written his landmark story of a young black man facing a hostile and indifferent society. It follows the unnamed protagonist from the South to the North, from youth to adulthood, and from racial naiveté to self-consciousness, ultimately understanding that he had allowed himself to be defined by a world that segregated and devalued him.
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2016