Discussing Ralph Ellison with Lucas Morel | Black Intellectuals & the African-American Experience #1

0:00 but ellison’s own um understanding through his own family and through the community that he grew up in which was segregated oklahoma taught him that at least the blacks that he knew were not simply victims that they were negotiating navigating and pressing back in direct ways and

0:21 indirect ways to the discrimination that they faced [Music] hi this is tony williams senior fellow at bri and we’re very honored this time to have scholar lucas morel who is going to discuss ralph ellison now the guiding question for this series is what contribution did this person

0:42 make to understanding the black experience in america and by way of introduction lucas morell who needs no introduction at the aerocracy is a great friend of ours but he’s a professor of politics at washington and lee university and the author and editor of several books and we discussed his most recent book lincoln and the american founding on a

1:04 recent scholar talk so you should check that out and uh he’s also the editor of two fine books on ralph ellison including ralph ellison and the raft of hope a political companion to invisible man and also the new territory ralph ellison and the 21st century lucas thank you for joining us again

1:27 great to be here tony great well uh as we jump right in um you know you write that ellison uh did not set out to write what’s called a protest novel but rather to explore more broadly the human condition and the african-american experience and so what was ellison’s role of

1:49 view of the role of fiction and of the novelist in the free society especially one that is not achieving its ideals equally for all yeah he it’s a good question because it’s one that he’d addressed directly in his acceptance speech when his novel surprisingly especially to him won it’s his first

2:10 book it won the national book awards the first book award to be won national book award to be won by a black author uh the book invisible man was published in uh 1952 and the award came in the following year saul bello who who became a good friend of ellison’s after uh was on that committee

2:33 that awarded the novel that prize and so um the speech that ellison gave is titled startling words for uh uh brave words for a startling occasion or something to that effect and it’s not a long speech but it’s a very profound and um deep one and sophisticated one in terms of ellison explaining the craft of

2:55 a novelist and what ellison was attempting to do in his novel as a black american but you gotta underline not just black you have to underline american allison was very struck with how western uh blacks who grew up in america were um if others have said that racism is in america’s

3:16 dna i think ellison would say actually the western experience and tradition and civilization actually goes deeper than race you don’t have to read very far into the novel to know that ellison thinks race is a big deal in america but in a way america was a bigger deal and it was a

3:37 bigger deal in part because of what blacks did to contribute to the development of the united states not just economically but culturally and politically throughout our history and so um the brave words that he gave uh for that startling occasion of winning the award uh were that he thought that something

3:59 had gone missing from the american novel since essentially the turn of the century he really saw folks like mark twain uh um wrestling in a serious way with the race question in the united states because it was such a pivotal question a pivotal problem problem and

4:20 great as other authors who came later were like hemingway who influenced ellison’s writing style um at the end of the day ellison had problems with hemingway because hemingway fell short of speaking about america because he didn’t deal with the role that race had to play in our

4:40 development and so he was trying to contribute as it were his literary widow’s might right the the the two mites um as an unknown uh author and trying to put um the black contribution to america into fiction i should hasten to add here that his

5:00 best friend by the time that he got around to writing this novel was a man named richard wright and richard wright of course wrote one of the greatest uh uh novels of the 20th century entitled native sun but a native sun the black protagonist is a fairly two-dimensional character who is all about simply reacting to the

5:23 world around him it is all cause and response or stimulus and response and ellison thought that that fell very far short of what blacks had by necessity by the uh an environment of racism and discrimination it fell very far short of telling the

5:43 black american story in terms of how blacks had to improvise use humor and develop so many virtues and attributes uh uh to to survive in the the crucible that was american race um and also to make meaning out of life and in you know things like jazz and the blues and folklore ellison thought wow

6:05 these are blacks were making contributions even while they were still enslaved how could this be missed um uh and so he thought um in in a way although he never put it this way in a way invisible man is a is a response to his best friend’s incredible novel native son in showing someone who is not simply a

6:27 victim of the racial structuring of the society around him but how this um how this person came to learn how to uh uh make a way out of no way as they used to say um and one thing to remember as well is that the vast majority of the characters in this novel are black and they don’t all think let alone act

6:49 the same way and the protagonist who is also a young black man um he’s having to negotiate his well his way and figure out his way as he encounters all these people who he learns painfully and unfortunately after very many trials he learns don’t have his best interests at heart and so it’s not

7:10 simply a race novel i guess is one thing i should say but it is a novel that ellison tried to make a contribution to telling america and the world the truth not simply about the black man’s condition but the truth about the human condition right and very good and so so you mentioned the idea of contribution uh

7:32 and and that was uh my next question actually uh in your essay interactive hope you speak a lot about the incredibly important role of the black individual in ellison’s invisible man and how black individuals can both challenge racial discrimination but also uh you know contribute to american culture broadly you mentioned jazz and

7:54 and novels and and in other ways so uh yeah so so what is that role of the of the individual yeah i um ellison did not believe that you could have produced something so significant and lasting you couldn’t make a contribution that eventually became a part of a nation’s

8:14 culture like its music um like its folklore the stories we tell about ourselves that reflect our understanding of a man’s place in the world that you couldn’t do that if you were simply the victim of discrimination in fact later in life ellison wrote an essay called on being the target of discrimination and he described a

8:36 trip to the local zoo he grew up in oklahoma um his father died when he was about three years old so he he grew up um almost i mean basically uh in a single single parent home but his mother was a very uh forceful character very strong woman and even though she knew the the local zoo

8:58 was whites only she took her kids uh her two boys uh to the zoo and and in intended to stay in that zoo until they got kicked out which they eventually did so he tells that’s one of the stories he tells in this essay but the title is very telling it’s not on being the victim of a discriminate of discrimination it’s on being the target

9:19 of discrimination nobody can doubt or or debate the the fact that this country um uh uh victimized uh folks on the basis of race among other things but ellison’s own um understanding through his own family and through the community that he grew up in

9:39 which was segregated oklahoma taught him that at least the blacks that he knew were not simply victims that they were negotiating navigating um and pressing back in direct ways and indirect ways to the discrimination that they faced and ellison learned from authors uh not all of them were black

9:59 but as one author in particular frederick douglass he learned that uh what was crucial for progress in this country was for blacks to fight for their freedom and act as free men and women even before the laws were changed even before customs changed and he tried to show examples of that in the novel as he put it i i wanted to get

10:21 these characters i wanted to get this reality of black american life into fiction before these characters disappeared uh before people become incredulous uh in terms of thinking about well wait that actually happened uh blacks were fighting for their freedom even before lincoln you know even before 13th amendment even before

10:41 martin luther king came around ellison was trying to get that into um his fiction which included short stories as well um and uh so so without the heroism of both well-known as well as not well-known people from martin luther king to his own mother ida

11:03 uh ellison he was trying to make them part of the the fictional dramatus personae uh of this country okay great and and so we we just talked about contribution but also you write a lot uh about allison and individual responsibility uh so how does the novel invisible man draw this out

11:25 well it draws it out at length in other words it’s not something we see an invisible man the narrator very overtly um let’s say just it happens over time in his own life he realizes he doesn’t simply have to do what his environment tells him to do he learns over time wait a second i’ve i’ve got a role to play i have agency as we

11:47 like to say i can take initiative um but it takes him a while to figure this out but even early in the novel perhaps the most famous scene it comes in chapter one we see invisible man already taking at least a modicum of responsibility he is a star student from the local high school and he is asked to come to a what’s known as

12:08 a smoker a party where all the big wigs in town which are all white from all walks of life from politics economic you know uh commerce uh to church uh they’re all there all the white movers and shakers are there and he thinks he’s being asked to give his high school valedictory speech which he has memorized

12:29 um it turns out he will eventually give that speech but they make him take part in what is known as the battle royale uh basically last man standing ten young black youth uh are just you know uh trunks boxer trunks and and and gloves are thrown in the

12:49 ring at the same time and it’s there and they’re blindfolded so the last man standing gets what they thought would be a prize uh and he’s one of the last two standings well how does he become one of the last two standing he’s not the fastest or certainly not the strongest or most vicious he’s a you know he wants to be an orator he wants to use words to

13:09 make a living not his fists uh but we find there’s one scene that ellison writes very tellingly he says as they were blindfolding these kids with white blindfolds of course hitchcon says two things he says and when he allowed him to put the blindfold on in other words there was a choice that invisible man could make he could

13:30 have said no i don’t want to participate in the smoker this is demeaning now that would have had consequences but it was a choice in ellison phrases it is he allowed him what does invisible man do he scrunches his face he at the moment figures out wait if i do something facially when they’re done tying the blindfold i relax and it’ll allow me

13:53 to see at least it’ll be a gap in it and so we see even in a situation where it looks like it’s all environment it’s all um circumstances it’s all external there’s no room for initiative or or will at all even in that moment ellison illustrates that that’s not so

14:14 much the case i think perhaps the greatest example comes actually in the prologue even before the novel begins formally if you will which presents itself as a memoir ellison has the name of the utility company called monopolated light and power now think about that monopoly enlightened power from the very outset

14:35 of the novel ellison says hey what if there were this institution that had all the power almost godlike right light let there be light so this utility company is calls itself monopolated but what is invisible man actually doing in his apartment he is stealing electricity the power

14:55 company knows two things somebody is using a whole lot of electricity somewhere near harlem it’s not smack dab it’s kind of in this liminal place in terms of location but we don’t know how we don’t know where where is it going they can’t do it and so ellison from the jump is already indicating yes my novelist who you will

15:18 find he doesn’t tell you explicitly but you learn in the prologue he is a black man living in predominantly white america but he has wired his apartment he tells the reader he’s wired the apartment with 1 369 light bulbs and he is firing them all up he is trying to get back

15:38 if you will the power and the electricity that they they you know gouged or extorted from him when he was willingly paying for it now he’s like no you owe me and so there are a lot of those sorts of details along the way that ellison um includes to indicate to the reader look not all

15:59 it’s not all like you think it is this company calls itself monopolated but it doesn’t really have total control over this particular person’s life apparently not all right uh and lucas uh yeah i read a lot of your books and and and essays and and you’ve reflected over over a lifetime of scholarship on the declaration of

16:19 independence and and that really does actually the equality principle plays a key role uh in invisible man particularly with the narrator’s grandfather and then uh later on an epilogue uh so how does ellison grapple with this central question of the american regime and you know grappling with this contradiction and

16:41 making sure it’s fulfilled for all people yeah i would say that it’s one of the central uh issues that is grappled with in the novel and it it’s no surprise that it it comes front and center at the end of the story what you refer to as the epilogue and he titles it the epilogue it’s where breen brought back to the president present after the

17:02 narrator has told us his story but the epilogue doesn’t simply repeat what he said in the prologue at the beginning uh and it’s what’s interesting is what you you call the uh the principle of equality um the grandfather and the narrator recounting what the grandfather taught him about that they never used the word equality they never say oh you

17:24 know it’s from the declaration of independence he uses this one phrase the principle it must be the principle it must be the principle and you think well good grief it’s clearly equality why doesn’t he say it well i think ellison is trying to get the reader to wrestle with that very notice well well of course this means equality well what have you learned about equality

17:46 in this novel uh we learned that it isn’t a uh practical reality for all members of american society and race it’s not the only thing it could be sex as well women right it’s 1950s after all um but uh uh equality especially in terms of the role that race unfortunately has played in

18:07 this country equality is something we say uh but we don’t always do and so um i i think the principle has to be measured uh along with um a very explicit um wrestling with the notion of responsibility in the prologue the prologue in fact closes with the discussion of how an invisible man

18:29 and generally speaking the protagonist as a young black man representing all black people how can an invisible man be responsible if you don’t acknowledge my existence and if you don’t see the reciprocal relationship we should have as fellow citizens what do i owe you why must i obey your laws if they’re not laws that i helped contribute to they’re

18:50 not laws that truly protect me equally as the 14th amendment it’s supposedly guaranteeing me remember this is a novel that was published before brownview board of education 1954. it’s published 12 years before the landmark legislation of civil rights act of 64 the voting rights act of 65 and already ellison is

19:11 putting on the table for the country how is it that we can narrow the gap how is it that we can align what we do more closely with what we profess to believe in in a subsequent novel that was published um posthumously in 1999 called juneteenth and then later three days before the shooting uh for a more

19:32 more full um example in juneteenth ellison has a scene where he he says um one of the protagonists says he’s got them caught between what they profess to believe and what they feel they cannot do without that is the story uh the long civil rights uh struggle that is american uh

19:54 history it’s it’s this long civil rights struggle as i can as i think of it um uh our challenge to as king put it be true to what we said on paper ellison gets the reader to think about responsibility personal responsibility social responsibility throughout the novel and it pivots the fulcrum of it is this question do we truly believe that

20:15 all human beings all men are really created equal and therefore have rights simply by virtue of the fact that they’re human beings and that uh it cannot be freedom for me and not for thee all right um last question uh i know we can have a whole course on this or maybe write a whole book but but what is uh you know what is

20:37 ralph ellison’s contribution to understanding the black experience in america okay a bad answer to that two minutes um well i mean um a great essay that addresses this is one that was published in time magazine uh in 1970 and the the title of the essay

20:57 is what america would be like without blacks and in that essay allison recounts in prose what he conveyed in fiction in invisible man and what he recounts there um is his understanding of the contributions that black people have made um in short that

21:17 a history and honest capacious comprehensive history of the development of this country at least since 1776 uh when we were born according to lincoln and i’m with lincoln on this and not some other people who think it was earlier that history if it is to be honest and comprehensive

21:38 must depict even through slavery times must depict depict blacks as as men and women who were struggling along with white um allies as we like to say today uh struggling for their freedom it wasn’t that we had to wait till lincoln’s emancipation proclamation

22:00 or um martin luther king and i have a dream speech or the letter from birmingham jail but that it’s been entirely throughout this country that blacks have participated both directly in the development of freedom starting with the american revolution and in every war blacks have fought but they have also been fighting

22:20 politically and socially and economically to not only make contributions to this country uh but contributions to their local community and contributions to their own freedom of frederick douglass i mentioned frederick douglass earlier and i didn’t finish that point uh frederick douglass said that until you became free um within yourself

22:42 you would never be able to benefit from your freedom once the laws changed and that was something he discovered when he was a slave and he talks about this in his autobiographies yeah plural he says that it would that while he might have remained he while he might have been a slave in form in other words in terms of society around him and the laws he had become a free man in

23:04 fact in other words when he recognized that it had to start with him he could not wait for his environment to change in order to exercise his freedom as a human being and of course that is a monumental task if you are enslaved if all the elements around you seem to not be in your favor

23:24 but but douglas was very clear on on that message and that was a message of course that wasn’t going to be heard from by slaves for the most part it was going to be heard by segregated black people who he was trying to teach look you can’t wait for the laws to change you have got to work on that you’ve got to act like a free person you have to gain that respect you’ve got to um

23:46 make sure that the stereotypes and prejudices and the bigotry around you have no ground to stand on and ellison i think drew from from from douglas among other people that lesson that freedom was the possession of black people from the jump they were denied it was obstructed in so many ways but they were fighting fighting fighting the whole time and his

24:08 novel and his essays and his interviews all make um bring to the foreground of the american consciousness uh that part of our past that reality uh and it was something that he believed was true be not because they were black but because they were human beings

24:29 lucas on that note i want to thank you uh so much for joining us and and i think you’re fired if ours our teachers our students our citizens who are watching have not yet read invisible man or or juneteenth uh or you know your remarkable essays on ellison i think you’ve inspired them to do so so thank you again

24:49 thank you and thank you all for joining us on this episode of scholar talks please check out our other installments on black intellectuals and the african-american experience including frederick douglass and anna julia cooper and check out our upcoming series on pivotal battles in american history and

25:09 yet another series on the cold war and the presidency so lots of food for thought thank you very much for joining us