Bom in Oklahoma City on March 1, 1914, Ralph Ellison was raised in a cultural atmosphere that encouraged self-fulfillment. He was awarded a scholarship by the state of Oklahoma in 1933 to attend Booker T. Washington's prestigious Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Ellison later expressed negative feelings about the scholarship, because he felt that the program was a way for Oklahoma to prevent black students from enrolling in its state universities. At Tuskegee, Ellison studied music, but he never graduated. In the summer of 1936, he went to New York City, where he met Alain Locke, the first black Rhodes Scholar and leader of the Harlem Renaissance arts movement, and Langston Hughes, renowned poet and author. Ellison never returned for his senior year of school.

In New York City, Ellison familiarized himself with Harlem while he looked for opportunities for a career in the arts. In 1938, after several financially difficult years...