Sample Biographies
#1
Harriet Beecher Stowe was born on June 14, 1811 in Litchfield, Connecticut (Hedrick
908), and she was the seventh child out of eight (Gatta 312). Lyman Beecher, her father, “one of
the most popular evangelical preachers of the pre-Civil War era, was determined to have a role in
shaping the culture of the new nation” (Hedrick 906). “[Stowe’s father] regarded his daughter as
a ‘great genius,’ though he wished she had been born male” (Gatta 312). While in her childhood,
“so great was [Stowe’s] thirst for reading that when she could not find books filled with
wonderful tales, she would curl up in her father’s study and read his religious pamphlets” (Elliot
12). After having nine children, Harriet’s mother, Roxana Foote Beecher, died when Harriet was
only five (Hedrick 906). Lyman later remarried in 1817 and had four more children with his new
wife (Gatta 312). Once Harriet reached young adult hood, she married Calvin Stowe, a professor
of biblical studies, on January 6, 1836 (313). When Stowe was 25 years old, she was an
eyewitness of a riot on July 30, 1836 (Elliot 6). “At the time, young Mrs. Stowe did not like
slavery, but she wasn’t an abolitionist, either” (6). “Her own life was filled with family, religion,
and work, but as she watched the scenes of this riot unfold, she felt a deep personal unrest”
(Elliot 6). By the year of 1850, Stowe had seven children, and she “found the actual experience
of running a household and raising children burdensome,” however, “the strain of supporting
their large family on Calvin’s modest salary gave her a strong incentive to write for money”
(Gatta 313). With the Fugitive Slave Law having been passed in 1850, Stowe began to write
Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Hedrick 906). “In Uncle Tom’s Cabin Stowe meant, above all, to convince
readers that slavery was sin – and, therefore, absolutely intolerable” (Gatta 313). Unlike many
other novels, Uncle Tom’s Cabin was originally published in installments from June 5, 1851 to
April 1, 1852, selling over 300,000 copies in the United States during its first year of publication
(Hedrick 907); “only the Bible sold more copies” (Elliot 35). “Stowe wrote what was
recognized at the time as a great American novel” (Hedrick 907), and today “it is recognized as
the book that started the tradition of writing novels with the goal of changing laws and social
conditions” (Elliot 56). Although Uncle Tom’s Cabin had been completed and published, Stowe
returned to the theme of slavery in her novel Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp (1856),
but unfortunately, this book never became as popular as Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Gatta 316).
However, Stowe remained “a figurehead in the fight against slavery, and she sailed that warship
with courage and pride” (Elliot 36). Calvin Stowe died in 1886, and her daughter Georgiana
passed away as well in 1887 after becoming addicted to morphine, killing her at the age of 44
(Gatta 319). Stowe died in Hartford, Connecticut (Elliot 51) on July 1, 1896, after suffering
from mental decline, and she was buried in the Andover Chapel cemetery (Gatta 319). “Small,
frail-looking Harriet Beecher Stowe […] awakened the nation to a terrible injustice […],
[helping to] shape the destiny of American people” (Alder 27), and “perhaps the strongest
indication that Uncle Tom’s Cabin retains its standing as a classic is the way in which it
continues to elicit strong reactions” (Gatta 320).
#2
Ralph Waldo Ellison was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 1914 to Lewis Ellison of
South Carolina and Ida Milsap Ellison of Georgia (O’Meally 7). “Cross-cultural interaction
among blacks, whites, and Native Americans was relatively” common in Oklahoma City and
Ellison identified with a wide array of people (Graham 22). Ellison’s passion for music
manifested early. In 1919, Ellison enrolled in the Frederick Douglass School where he was able
to hone his musical skill (23). He attended the school for twelve years and later won a
scholarship from the state of Oklahoma in 1933 to study music at the Tuskegee Institute in
Alabama (Busby 5-6). Ellison maintained a “Renaissance man ideal at Tuskegee,” not only
studying music but reading widely (Busby 9) as well as dabbling in poetry and sculpture
(O’Meally 84). Ellison’s time at Tuskegee was cut short due to a scholarship mix-up that left
him with no money for his fourth year, so “fully intending to return to school, Ellison headed
north to New York” in the summer of 1936 (O’Meally 84). By happy accident, Ellison met
Langston Hughes on his second day in Harlem (O’Meally 30). Through Hughes he met Richard
Wright, “and a friendship between Wright and Ellison blossomed” (30). As the Great
Depression depleted opportunities in Harlem, Ellison was able to find a job, with Wright’s
assistance, researching and collecting facts and folklore for books on Negro Culture for the
Federal Writers Project, “where he was employed from 1938 to 1942” (Graham 27). At the time,
Wright was an open member of the Communist party, but as WWII progressed both Ellison and
Wright lost faith in the organization. Ellison’s disillusionment from the Communist Party
partially inspired the writing of Invisible Man (O’Meally 37, 54). After toiling for seven years,
Ellison’s masterwork, Invisible Man, was brought forth in 1952 (Busby 16) and in 1953, he
received the National Book Award, among other honors and accolades (Busby 17). Ralph
Ellison died in 1994 (Ellison, Invisible Man i).