Black History: Writers of Color Posters & Prints, “E...-F...-G...-”
for social studies and literature classrooms.

Ralph Ellison
b. 3-3-1914; Oklahoma City, OK
d. 4-16-1994

Poster Text: Ralph Ellison only published three books during his life. Yet he is one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, and some say his novel Invisible Man is the most important American work written after World War II.

Ralph was born in Oklahoma City. His family was poor, but his parents encouraged him, and he saw himself as a “Renaissance man” who could accomplish anything. Ralph's father died when Ralph was young. His mother worked as a maid for white families and brought home old books, magazines, and records. Mr. Ellison said that these things “spoke to me of a life which was broader and more interesting – and of a word which I could some day make my own.”

Ralph read everything from fairy tales to Freud, but he thought he would grow up to be a musician. He studied music and played the trumpet at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. But a mix-up over his scholarship caused him to leave school and move to New York City in 1936. On his second day there, he met the poet Langston Hughes, who introduced him to the novelist Richard Wright. Soon, Mr. Ellison began writing reviews and short stories. Then in 1945, he wrote down these five words: “I am an invisible man.” These words became the beginning of his masterpiece.

Invisible Man is about an African American man who feels invisible because people can't see who he is beyound the color of his skin. Although the novel centers on racial issues, it is also about feeling cut off in modern society – regardless of race. Mr. Ellison drew this writing style from authors like James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway, as well as from African American folklore and jazz and blues music. In 1953, Invisible Man wone the National Book Award, making Mr. Ellison the first African American author to win this prize.

Despite the success that Invisible Man brought him, Mr. Ellison's second novel, Juneteenth, wasn't published until five years after his death. Still, there is no denying the force of his impact on our society. Writing, he said, “offers me the possibility of contributing not only to the growth of the literature, but to the shaping of the culture as I should like it to be.”

“I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe. ... 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.” Invisible Man

• more Ralph Ellison posters
• more Voices of Diversity posters

Olaudah Equiano
aka Gustavus Vassa
b. c. 1745; near the Niger River
d. 3-31-1797; London

Olaudah Equiano's autobiography depicts his “kidnapping in Africa at the age of ten, his service as the slave of an officer in the British Navy, his ten years of labor on slave ships until he was able to purchase his freedom in 1766, and his life afterward as a leading and respected figure in the antislavery movement in England”, helping to influence British abolition of the slave trade through the Slave Trade Act of 1807.

Jessie Redmon Fauset
b. 4-27-1882; New Jersey
d. 4-39-1961; Philadelphia (heart failure)

Jessie Redmon Fauset, a poet, novelist, essayist, is most noted as the literary editor of The Crisis (NAACP magazine) under W. E. B. Du Bois, a role for which Langston Hughes called her the “midwife of the Harlem Renaissance”.

Fauset, who earned a degree from Cornell, the University of Pennsylvania and the Sorbonne, was also a teacher for many years.

The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni (no commercially available poster)

“Nikki” Giovanni
née Yolande Cornelia
b. 6-7-1943; Knoxville, TN

Poet and activist Nikki Giovanni has taught English at Virginia Tech since 1987. In 2004 Giovanni was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album.

Édouard Glissant
b. 9-21-1928; Martinique
d. 2-3-2011; Paris, France

Édouard Glissant, a French writer, poet and literary critic, is widely recognised as being one of the most influential figures in Caribbean thought and cultural commentary.

Glissant had been visiting professor of French Literature at CUNY since 1995, and the president of France's cultural centre devoted to the history of slave trade since 2006.

Édouard Glissant quote ~
•“The author must be demythifies, certaily, because he must be integrated into a common resolve. The collective ‘we’ becomes the site of the generative system, and the true subject.”