Ralph Ellison. Courtesy Oklahoma Hall of Fame Archives.

Ralph Ellison was a world-renowned American novelist who helped transform the national literary landscape by effectively weaving the Black experience into mainstream American literature. Raised in Oklahoma City, when he was young Ellison wanted to be a composer. He was particularly fond of jazz, an interest that would later be reflected in his avant-garde style of writing. He enrolled at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama to study music, but dropped out in 1936 after moving to the Harlem borough of New York, where his interest in writing took hold. 

Hannah Diggs Atkins, left, and Ralph Ellison, center, attending the dedication of the Ralph Ellison Library, 1975. Courtesy Oklahoma Historical Society.

In 1938, Ellison began working for the Federal Writers Project, interviewing Harlem's African American residents. In 1952 he became a major American literary figure after authoring Invisible Man, a novel about an unnamed Black youth from the South who moved to Harlem in the early twentieth century. It addresses some of the multilayered social issues many African Americans faced. It was an immediate success, winning the National Book Award in 1953. 

Ralph Ellison giving a speech. Courtesy Oklahoma Hall of Fame Archives.

After living in Rome as a fellow of the American Academy from 1955 to 1957, Ellison returned to the United States to teach creative writing and Black folklore at various colleges, including Bard College, the University of Chicago, Yale, and Rutgers. In 1964 he published a collection of his essays, Shadow and Act, which covered a range of different topics including sports, music, and theater. He never finished his last work, a novel which was posthumously published as Juneteenth in 1999.