Ralph Ellison (1984)

Novelist, literary and music critic, scholar, jazz trumpeter, photographer, and short story writer Ralph Ellison used the issue of race in society to express universal challenges of identity and self-discovery. His relationships with Langston Hughes and Richard Wright encouraged him to join the Federal Writers Project and later pen the National Book Award-winning Invisible Man. This groundbreaking novel depicts a man shunned by society who questions the value of his own existence: “I am an invisible man. 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.” Ellison also elevated the written word’s active reflections on society through essays on music, activism, and print media in such works as Shadow and Act and Going to the Territory. Through his work, he transformed the struggle for racial equality into a means by which we can better envision an entire social rejuvenation of shared justice and compassion.