College Board Advanced
Placement Teaching and
Learning Conference
Cultural Contexts for Ralph
Ellison’s Invisible Man
Gigi Muirheid, presenter
Session Overview
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PBS interview with Avon Kirkland on Ralph Ellison, 1992
AP Central
Armstrong’s “What Did I Do to Be So Black and Blue?”
“Battle Royal,” Avon Kirkland’s documentary
Booker T. Washington’s “The Atlanta Exposition Address,”
1895
Brown v. Board of Education, Supreme Court Brief, 1954
“Why Mr. Dog Runs Brer Rabbit”
Marcus Garvey’s “Africa for the Africans”
PBS Interview concerning
Invisible Man
Jackie Judd, Morning Edition, 1992, NPR
 50th anniversary of publication of Invisible
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Man
Two years before Ellison’s death, l994
 Avon Kirkland’s documentary, “Ralph
Ellison: An American Journey”
 Jackie Judd's interview
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“What Did I Do to Be So Black and
Blue?”
Louis Armstrong prominently featured in
Prologue of Invisible Man
 “And so I play the invisible music of my
isolation”
 “You hear this music simply because music is
heard and seldom seen, except by musicians.
Could this compulsion to put invisibility down in
black and white be thus an urge to make music
of invisibility?”
 Ken Burns’s Jazz video
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“What Did I Do to Be So Black and
Blue?”
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Armstrong’s song from 1929, lyrics by Andy
Razaf, music by Fats Waller
Female, not male, speaker -- weak, exploited
Black – invisible, not seen
Blue – sad, beaten, scarred,
Blue(s) - a song
“my favorite dessert of vanilla ice cream and
sloe gin. . . red liquid over white mound”
“Battle Royal”
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“Battle Royal,” Avon Kirkland’s documentary
Filming of scene from Chapter 1 of Invisible Man
Battle motif runs throughout novel
On first page of Prologue: “One night I
accidentally bumped into a man, and perhaps
because of the near darkness he saw me and
called me an insulting name.”
Chapter One – Battle Royal
Narrator invited to give a speech at a gathering
of the town’s leading white citizens.
Booker T. Washington’s “The Atlanta
Exposition Address,” 1895
Chapter one begins with a description of
the death of the narrator’s grandfather.
 “About eighty-five years ago they were
told that they were free, united with
others of our country in everything
pertaining to the common good, and in
everything social, separate like the fingers
of the hand. And they believed it.”
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Booker T. Washington’s “The Atlanta
Exposition Address,” 1895
“Son, after I’m gone I want you to keep
up the good fight. I never told you, but
our life is a war and I have been a traitor
all my born days . . . .”
 “Live with your head in the lion’s mouth . .
. . Overcome ‘em with yeses, undermine
‘em with grins, agree ‘em to death and
destruction, let ‘em swoller you till they
vomit or bust wide open.”
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Booker T. Washington’s “The
Atlanta Exposition Address,” 1895
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“Cast down your bucket where you are.”
“To those of my race who depend on bettering their
condition in a foreign land or who underestimate the
importance of cultivating friendly relations with the
Southern white man . . . I would say: Cast down your
bucket where you are . . . .”
“we learn to dignify and glorify common labour”
“It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the
top.”
“In all things that are purely social we can be as
separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things
essential to mutual progress.”
Brown v. Board of Education,
Supreme Court Brief, 1954
Ellison published IM, 1952
Thurgood Marshall’s brief, 1954
“with the question of the effects of segregation,
it must be recognized that these effects do not
take place in a vacuum, but in a social context.”
 “difficult to disentangle the effects of
segregation from . . . pattern of social
disorganization . . . high disease and mortality
rates, crime and delinquency, poor housing,
disrupted family life, and general substandard
living conditions.”
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Brown v. Board of Education,
Supreme Court Brief, 1954
“minority group children learn the inferior status
to which they are assigned . . . React with
feelings of inferiority and a sense of personal
humiliation. . . . Become confused about their
own personal worth”
 “He wonders whether his group and he himself
are worthy of no more respect than they
receive. This conflict and confusion leads to selfhatred and rejection of his own group.”
 “Segregation imposes upon individuals a
distorted sense of social reality.”
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“Why Mr. Dog Runs Brer Rabbit”
Ellison’s use of “high culture” and “low
culture”
 Use of African folk tales, stories handed
down from slaves
 Peetie Wheatstraw, the devil’s only son-inlaw, chapter 9, as IM walks toward his
visit with Mr. Emerson’s son.
 Peetie Wheatstraw, actual blues singer in
Harlem, William Bunch
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“Why Mr. Dog Runs Brer Rabbit”
Peetie Wheatstraw, carrying rolls of blue
prints, singing the blues
 “What I want to know is,” he said, “is you
got the dog?”
 “Dog? What dog?” . . . .
 “Well, maybe it’s the other way round,” he
said. “Maybe he got holt of you.”
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“Why Mr. Dog Runs Brer Rabbit”
Brer Rabbit steals the fish from Mr.
Buzzard
 Mr. Dog asks Brer Rabbit how he got so
many fish
 Brer Rabbit persuades Mr. Dog to hang his
tail in the water until the water freezes
 Mr. Dog chases Brer Rabbit in the woods
for ever after.
 “Is you got the dog?”
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Marcus Garvey’s “Africa for the
Africans”
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References to Garvey in novel, chapter 17
– “Well, we’re not Garvey, and he didn’t last.”
“It’s Ras the Exhorter,”
“There’s Raz, over there”
“Come in with us, mahn. We build a glorious
movement of black people. Black People!”
“And before I could answer Clifton spun in the
dark and there was crack and I saw Ras go
down.”
Marcus Garvey’s “Africa for the
Africans”
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Jamaican intellectual and political leader
Emigrated to U.S. in 1916
Encourages a black separatist movement to
immigrate to Ethiopia
At odds with the Communist Party
Founded a steamship company
Convicted of mail fraud; deported to Jamaica
Critical in founding the Rastafarianism
– Venerated Haile Selassie, emperor of Ethiopia