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 film clips in its archives and extensive links.

“The Story of Little Black Sambo” by Helen Bannerman has a controversial history and images.

The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow is an interactive PBS website about the system of government-sanctioned racial oppression and segregation. Includes a map and several student role-playing activities.

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

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, by EDSITEMent.

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?”

“How to Sing the Blues” by Lame Mango Washington -- Silly

Lifting the Veil of Ignorance by Charles Keck -- Statue of Booker T. Washington at Tuskegee Institute

After “Invisible Man” the Prologue by Jeff Wall --Photograph based on a staged piece based on the Prologue.

The Problem We All Live With by Norman Rockwell -- appeared in Look magazine in 1964.

Harlem Renaissance

• PAL: Harlem Renaissance Introduction (emphasizes writers)
• Online Newshour (economic and political influences)
• Rhapsodies in Black (art)

Black artists whose work seems especially appropriate and useful include Romare Bearden, Aaron Douglas, Palmer Hayden, William H. Johnson, Loïs Mailou Jones, Jacob Lawrence, Augusta Savage, and Henry Ossawa Tanner

The Tulsa Public Library African-American Resource Center thoroughly explores Oklahoma’s historical black towns, the Greenwood Riots of 1921, state growth of blues and jazz, etc.•

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 article from The Nation, 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 -- Back when the History Channel actually showed history, this In Search of History video was easily available. It can still be ordered through Amazon. YouTube has clips from Tulsa television shows on the Tulsa riots.

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.

Mules and Men -- Zorah Neale Hurston’s insightful collection of African-American folktales and hoodoo stories. Though she is better known for Their Eyes Were Watching God, this anthropological study reflects her field research.

Booker T. Washington Resources

• Atlanta Compromise Speech
• Booker T. Washington National Monument Lifting the Veil statue
• Booker T. Washington Society

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Time Magazine Archive Collection
• King Instititute Encyclopedia at Stanford
• “Christmas Sermon on Peace”

Malcolm X -- Ras the Exhorter

• Malcolm X Project @ Columbia University multimedia
• Malcolm X Reference Archive audio resources
• Malcolm X Research Site audio resources
• “If You’re Black, You Were Born in Jail” YouTube
• “Who Taught You to Hate Yourself” YouTube
• “The Ballot or The Bullet” -- Detroit and Cleveland versions

Black Media Archive provides more than 200 free audio and video resources -- speeches, interviews, archival video, movies, music, and more. Available online and as an iTunes podcast subscription. Remarkable.

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.

“Teaching the N-Word” at American Scholar discusses classroom issues with racial langage.

Random House Teacher Guide
is organized in the order of the book. Includes reading comprehension questions, discussion questions different from the reading guide, and suggestions for further study. The Reading Guide provides fifteen thought-provoking discussion questions, mostly on the book as a whole.

Excerpt from Prologue.

Excerpt from Chapter 1.

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 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.

American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1940. Search by Ralph Ellison and you’ll actually come up with some of the intervuews he personally 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.

Trailer for “King of the Bingo Game” PBS Video on YouTube.

Best Handouts -- Most are in PDF format, but a few are also in Word document format so you can edit.

• Nation Review -- Review from 1982 used to introduce the unit; includes the calendar for reading chedule.
• MsEffie’s Study Guide (PDF or Doc) -- Includes literary terms that should be covered, “big picture” questions on imagery and symbolism, significant scenes, characterization, structure, philosophy, and type of novel.
• MsEffie’s Chapter Questions (PDF or Doc) --Composition and short answer questions by chapters.
• 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.
• Notes -- Brilliant teaching notes by another teacher (whose name is not on the copy I received. Please claim!)
• Hidden Name and Complex Fate -- Excerpt from Ellison’s essay, multiple-choice quiz, writing assignment, and name poster.
• Style Assignment (PDF or Doc) -- Seven passages for stylistic analysis.
• Style Models (PDF or Doc) -- Three pages of exceptional sentences to imitate, using any content but following Ellison’s sentence structure.
• Persona Writing Assignments (PDF or Doc) require that you write in the voice of the Invisible Man. See the Sophomore Autobiography Portfolio for similar assignments to adapt for Persona Writing.
• Harlem Renaissance -- Oklahoma City Museum of Art 40-Page Docent Resource Guide for the 2009 Exhibit includes 25 artworks (painting, photography, music, artifacts, and poetry), several lessons, and an extensive bibliography. (Additional Research Project)
• Found and Decorated Poetry -- Based on Tom Phillips’s 1970 Humament, a “decorated” Victorian novel so popular it is in its fourth edition (There’s even an iPad Humament AP). Student “decorated” pages from Invisible Man (you may need to view smaller on screen to fit whole page at a time).
• Calligraphy Quotes -- Assignment, guidelines, grading checklist, and samples of student calligraphy from the novel. Students were to enhance the quote through calligraphy and illustration and also write a paragraph explaining the quote and why it was important to the novel.
• Sentence Combining -- Battle Royal Symbolism (by another teacher) and Review of Novel. Sentence combining activity for each produces thesis and introduction to be supported by further evidence from the novel and developed into a full essay.
• Paragraph Topics (PDF or Doc) -- Short answer, paragraph responses for the novel as a whole.
• In-class Timed Prompts (PDF or Doc) selected from previous AP prompts.
• EXAMS OVER THE NOVEL --Objective Exam (75 multiple choice and matching) and an Identification Exam (50 Identifications, 3 forms). Word formats and Answers will be provided to donors upon request.

Critical Resources

Understanding History Through the Literary Reviews of Invisible Man by Virginia Brackett focuses on three well-known critical articles (also PDF):

• Saul Bellow, “Man Underground,” Commentary, 1952. (Review of Invisible Man).
• Irving Howe, “Black Boys and Native Sons,” The Nation, May 10, 1952 (essay about Wright, Baldwin, and Ellison).
• Wright Morris, “A Tale From Underground,” New York Times, April 13, 1952 (Review of Invisible Man).

Robert Abrams, “The Ambiguities of Dreaming in Ellison’s Invisible Man.”

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

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

Yvonne Fonteneau, “Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man: A Critical Reevaluation.”

Marjorie Fryse, “Ralph Ellison’s Heroic Fugitive.”

Jane Gottschalk, “Sophisticated Jokes: The Use of American Authors in Invisible Man.”

Christopher Hanlon, “Eloquence and Invisible Man.”

Lena J. Hill, “The Visual Art of Invisible Man: Ellison’s Portrait of Blackness.”

Jim Neighbors, “Plunging (outside of) History: Naming and Self-Possession in Invisible Man.”

Stuart Noble-Goodman, “Mythic Guilt and the Burden of Sin in Ellison’s Invisible Man.”

Robert O'Meally, “Invisible Man and the Blues.”

Christopher Shinn, “Masquerade, Magic, and Carnival in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.”

Robert Stepto, From Behind the Veil: A Study of Afro-American Narrative (Excerpt). Apply this analysis of slave narratives to the novel.

Julia Sun-Joo Lee, “Knucklebones and Knocking-bones: The Accidental Trickster in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.”

Advanced Placement Free Response Prompts have mentioned Invisible Man more times than any other novel -- specifically 23 times --1976, 1977, 1978, 1982, 1983, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010.

Student Web Pages on Invisible Man