— Ch. 1 · Oklahoma City, 1913 —
Ralph Ellison.
~6 min read · Ch. 1 of 7
Ralph Waldo Ellison was born on the 1st of March 1913 in Oklahoma City. His father Lewis Alfred worked as a construction foreman and small-business owner before dying from work-related injuries in 1916. The family moved to Gary, Indiana that same year seeking better opportunities for their children. Ida Millsap, his mother, struggled to find employment while her brother lost his job. They returned to Oklahoma where Ralph worked as a busboy, shoeshine boy, hotel waiter, and dentist's assistant. He received free trumpet lessons from a neighborhood friend's father and became the school bandmaster at Douglass High School. Principal Inman E. Page and music teacher Zelia N. Breaux influenced him during these high school years. He graduated in 1931 after working various jobs to support his precarious family life.
Tuskegee Institute Awakening
Ellison applied twice for admission to Tuskegee Institute before finally being admitted in 1933 due to a lack of trumpet players in its orchestra. He hopped freight trains to reach Alabama and discovered the institution maintained class-conscious attitudes similar to white schools. While studying music under composer William L. Dawson and piano instructor Hazel Harrison, he spent free time reading modernist classics in the library. T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land served as a major awakening moment for him. Librarian Walter Bowie Williams enthusiastically shared knowledge about James Joyce and Gertrude Stein with Ellison. English teacher Morteza Drexel Sprague opened his eyes to literature as a living art form. Through Sprague, he encountered Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment and Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure. These works identified brilliant, tortured anti-heroes that resonated deeply with him. He remained at Tuskegee until 1936 before leaving without completing degree requirements.