by Ralph Ellison

Timeline of African-American History serves as a good beginning for the historical approach. Sponsored by African-American Pamphlets, a site well worth exploring for an overlooked alternative literary form.

The Encyclopedia Britannica Guide to Black History is an extraordinary resource and they have allowed free access. Beautiful graphics, sound and video clips, and imaginative assignments, such as an anti-slavery broadside and a poster for a Harlem Renaissance show, make this a site worth exploring.

Documenting the American South offers a broad collection of more than 300 slave narratives. Several analytic essays are useful, especially one discussing the religious content of such narratives. Illustrations are also included.

African American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship offers political background, as well as in-depth resources on Booker T. Washington's importance.

Harlem 1900-1940 An African-American Community, presented by the Schomburg Exhibition, has links to short biographies of anyone who was anyone, teacher resources, great contemporary photographs, and directions for Reading a Photograph.

African-American Studies Video Resources is an extensive annotated bibliography of available films, provided by the University of California at Berkeley. Includes some film clips.

Black Film Center is dedicated to film by and about black artists and black culture. Has some incredible film clips, one as early as 1897.

The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow is an interactive PBS website. "Jim Crow" came to personify the system of government-sanctioned racial oppression and segregation in the United States. Specific sections include a map and several student role-playing activities.

AT&T Knowledge Network Explorer: Black History Homepage has links to five related sites. Black History Hotlist is a starting point for anyone studying African-American events and issues. If you want to test your knowledge of African-American history (and even develop an essay on the topic), try the Interactive Treasure Hunt & Quiz. The Subject Sampler Sampling African America helps you engage in the topic and explore things about it that personally interest you. Get involved with two webquests: Little Rock 9 and Tuskegee Tragedy.

Musarium: Without Sanctuary is a stunning and shocking website dedicated to the images from the book and traveling photographic exhibit of the same name. Be forewarned, not for the squeamish.

What Is the Blues? from the PBS Blues series attempts to define the term, providing examples and lesson plans in the Blues Classroom.

More in-depth lessons that include other resources and extensive links are available at Learning the Blues.

You would not want to miss NPR Morning Edition's 12-part series Honky Tonks, Hymns, and the Blues -- a detailed history with complete programs, music clips, and supplemental CDs.

Strange Fruit focuses on the famous Billie Holiday song which is certainly implied in Invisible Man. Further discussion of protest music as a genre. Includes a sound clip and lyrics.

Ralph Ellison Project at Jerry Jazz Musician
Robert O'Meally's interview is especially useful since it addresses not only music in general but also Ellison's Living with Music. Also touches upon T. S. Eliot and Louis Armstrong. Multiple sound clips, including "What Did I Do To Be So Black and Blue?" (Give it time; it' a slow load.)

Art History Resources is an extensive webliography, organized by style, artist, time period, etc. You can find representative examples of impressionism, expressionism, naturalism, realism, and surrealism here.

Harlem Renaissance

• PAL: Harlem Renaissance Introduction (emphasizes writers)
• Online Newshour (economic and political influences)
• Rhapsodies in Black (art)
• S.C.O.R.E. CyberGuide (music links)
• Oklahoma City Art Museum Special Exhibit

Powerful Days in Black and White is a photo study of racism in America. caution: some pictures are shocking.

Because there are so many resources available to English teachers, I will just suggest some black artists whose work seems especially appropriate and useful.

• Romare Bearden
• Aaron Douglas
• Palmer Hayden
• William H. Johnson
• Loïs Mailou Jones
• Jacob Lawrence
• Augusta Savage
• Henry Ossawa Tanner

The Tulsa Public Library maintains an African-American Resource Center that thoroughly explores Oklahoma's historical black towns, the Greenwood Riots if 1921, state growth of blues and jazz, and much more.

The Tulsa Race Riot by Scott Ellsworth includes a lengthy narrative, interviews, and photographs.

Tulsa Reparations Coalition includes survivor oral history, reparations commission reports, bibliography of books on the riots. The full report from the Oklahoma Commission to study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 is available for download.

"Tulsa, 1921" -- An August 23, 2003, article tracing the history of the riots and their long-term effect on race relations. Even makes connections to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

The Night That Tulsa Burned -- Study Guide with vocabulary and questions. Video available from the History Channel.

Check out the Oklahoma Historical Society.

Motif Chart -- Chapter by chapter notes on dreams, sex, violence, paper, vision, symbolic objects, oratory, family, music, and power. Includes a blank form for taking your own notes.

Song of the South -- According to urban legend, this 1936 Disney mixed media film based on Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus stories has never been released in the United States, supposedly because of opposition by the NAACP. Get the story here. Best way to get the film is eBay.

Symbolism.org -- Focuses on symbolism of popular culture. Useful resource for exploring deeper meanings.

Phrase Finder -- Meanings and origins of phrases, sayings, clichés and quotes.

Found and Decorated Poetry -- Based on Tom Phillips's Humament, a "decorated" Victorian novel, which is out of print, but you can see sample pages at the following sites.

• Charles Sturt University Art and Books
• Tom Phillips Homepage

Language and Style

"An Essay on a Wickedly Powerful Word" by Keith Woods
An essay by a black journalist on word choice and its effects. Worth checking other articles from the Poynter Institute, a journalism school with a focused ethnic awareness. Also includes a Diversity section with a bibliography, tip sheets and teaching modules.

Dialect Survey uses word specific questions to map dialect areas.

The Story of English by Robert McCrum, "Black on White." Better if your library has copies of the Robert MacNeil PBS series.

Oratory: Men of Words

Booker T. Washington Resources

• Atlanta Compromise Speech
• Today in History
• Booker T. Washington National Monument

Frederic Douglass Resources

• Keele University Website
• Frederic Douglas National Site

Writing Black - Keele University provides links to unusual language resources, such as black pulp fiction, interviews, historical texts, etc.

Persona Writing Assignments, though not strictly speech, do require that you write in the voice of the Invisible Man. See the Sophomore Autobiography Portfolio for similar assignments to adapt for Persona Writing.

PBS American Masters: Ralph Ellison
Video available for purchase traces the influence Ellison has had on modern literature and includes enactments of several scenes from the novel (which should perhaps be avoided until the novel is finished). Includes feature essay, career timeline, eight additional video interviews, and a teacher section. Additional teacher materials available at Black and Blue: Jazz in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, which draws upon resources from the Ken Burns's Jazz series.

New York Times Featured Author: Ralph Ellison
Offers extensive interviews, reviews, even an obituary. Free, but requires registration. Be sure to check the Roger Rosenblatt homage.

Ralph Ellison's Legacy on Online NewsHour on June 21, 1999. Sound clip (11 minutes),with Ellison interview, discussion of Juneteenth and how it came to be. Guests include John callahan, Ellison's literary executor, and and Charles Johnson, author of Middle Passage.

Biographical PowerPoint
This class project could serve as an example for student projects or a general introduction to the author.

American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940. Search by Ralph Ellison and you'll actusally come up with some of the intervuews he actually recorded as a young man in New York City. My favorite is called "Harlem."

National Book Award Acceptance Speech 1953
As the first black author to win a National Book award, Ellison's comments are particularly relevant. He comments: "If I were asked in all seriousness just what I considered to be the chief significance of Invisible Man as a fiction, I would reply: Its experimental attitude and its attempt to return to the mood of personal moral responsibility for democracy which typified the best of our nineteenth-century fiction."

This History Channel clip has Ellison talking On the Origins of Invisible Man. He speaks specifically about the influence of current events and his reading of Lord Raglan's The Hero.

Random House Teacher Guide
Organized in the order of the book. Includes reading comprehension questions, discussion question different from the reading guide, and suggestions for further study.

Random House/Vintage Books Reading Guide
Fifteen thought-provoking discussion questions, mostly on the book as a whole.

Exerpt from Chapter 1.

Unabridged book available on audiotape, but you can pre-hear a significant exerpt from Chapter 7, courtesy of Salon.com. Read by Joe Morton.

MsEffie's Chapter Questions

Daniel Pogebra's Quixotic Pedagogue Invisible Man Page

Critical Resources

Understanding History Through the Literary Reviews of Invisible Man by Virginia Brackett, Ph.D. You can download this PDF file with links to specific critical articles:

• Irving Howe, "Black Boys and Native Sons" (essay about Wright, Baldwin, and Ellison).
• Saul Bellow, "Man Underground" (Review of Invisible Man).
• Wright Morris, "A Tale From Underground" (Review of Invisible Man).

Ernest Kaiser, "A Critical Look at Ellison's Fiction & at Social & Literary Criticism by and about the Author."

John Corry, "Profile of an American Novelist, A White View of Ralph Ellison."

Robert Stepto, From Behind the Veil: A Study of Afro-American Narrative (Exerpt).

My Handouts

• Style Assignment
• Passages
• Possible Graphs
• Style Models