Editing Ralph Ellison (section)

==In New York==
Desiring to study sculpture, he moved to New York City on July 5, 1936, and found lodging at a [[YMCA]] on 135th Street in [[Harlem]], then "the culture capital of black America".<ref name="Als 2007" /> He met [[Langston Hughes]], "Harlem's unofficial diplomat" of the Depression era, and one—as one of the country's celebrity black authors—who could live from his writing.<ref name="Als 2007" /> Hughes introduced him to the black literary establishment with Communist sympathies.<ref name="Als 2007"/>

He met several artists who would influence his later life, including the artist [[Romare Bearden]] and the author [[Richard Wright (author)|Richard Wright]] (with whom he would have a long and complicated relationship). After Ellison wrote a book review for Wright, Wright encouraged him to write fiction as a career. Ellison's first published story was "Hymie's Bull", inspired by his 1933 [[hobo]]ing on a train with his uncle to get to Tuskegee. From 1937 to 1944, Ellison had more than 20 book reviews, as well as short stories and articles, published in magazines such as ''New Challenge'' and ''[[The New Masses]]''. 

Ellison was also influenced to experiment with photography through his friendship with photographer [[Gordon Parks|Gordon Parks.]] The two collaborated on a photo essay in 1948, "Harlem is Nowhere,"<ref>{{Cite news |title=Harlem Is Nowhere, by Ralph Ellison |url=https://harpers.org/archive/2014/08/harlem-is-nowhere-2/ |archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/20241204222701/https://harpers.org/archive/2014/08/harlem-is-nowhere-2/ |archive-date=2024-12-04 |access-date=2025-04-22 |work=Harper's Magazine |language=en-US}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Ralph Ellison - Archives - The Gordon Parks Foundation |url=https://www.gordonparksfoundation.org/archives/ralph-ellison |access-date=2025-04-22 |website=www.gordonparksfoundation.org |language=en}}</ref> on the first racially integrated psychiatric clinic called Lafargue Clinic in Harlem along with other photography projects over the years. His essay "The Pictorial Problem" was meant to be a manifesto of how images could psychologically impact the viewer. While working with Gordon Parks, Ellison was an inspiration to Gordon on creating impactful photographs. Ellison's essay would later become a guiding principle for Park's photography.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Ralph Ellison: Photographer - Gordon Parks Foundation Gallery - The Gordon Parks Foundation |url=https://www.gordonparksfoundation.org/exhibitions/gordon-parks-foundation-gallery/ralph-ellison-photographer |access-date=2025-04-22 |website=www.gordonparksfoundation.org |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite AV media |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1u9buAePlo |title=Gordon Parks and Ralph Ellison |date=2021-12-13 |last=Fredric Wertham |access-date=2025-04-22 |via=YouTube}}</ref>

Wright was then openly associated with the [[Communist Party USA|Communist Party]], and Ellison was publishing and editing for communist publications, although his "affiliation was quieter", according to historian Carol Polsgrove in ''Divided Minds''.<ref name= DivMinds>{{cite book| last= Polsgrove| first= Carol| year= 2001| title= Divided Minds: Intellectuals and the Civil Rights Movement| place= New York| publisher= [[W. W. Norton & Company]]| isbn= 0393020134| url= https://archive.org/details/dividedmindsinte00pols}}</ref> Both Wright and Ellison lost their faith in the Communist Party during World War II, when they felt the party had betrayed African Americans and replaced [[Marxism|Marxist]] class politics with social reformism. In a letter to Wright, dated August 18, 1945, Ellison poured out his anger with party leaders: "If they want to play ball with the [[bourgeoisie]] they needn't think they can get away with it.&nbsp;... Maybe we can't smash the atom, but we can, with a few well chosen, well written words, smash all that crummy filth to hell." In the wake of this disillusion, Ellison began writing ''Invisible Man,'' a novel that was, in part, his response to the party's betrayal.<ref name= DivMinds />{{rp|66–69}}
{{external media| float = right| video1 = [https://www.c-span.org/video/?198180-1/ralph-ellison-biography Presentation by Arnold Ramperad at the Library of Congress on ''Ralph Ellison: A Biography'', May 3, 2007], [[C-SPAN]]| video2 = [https://www.c-span.org/video/?201269-5/ralph-ellison Presentation by Arnold Ramperad at the National Book Festival on ''Ralph Ellison: A Biography'', September 29, 2007], [[C-SPAN]]}}

In 1938, Ellison met Rose Araminta Poindexter, a woman two years his senior.{{efn|Rose Araminta Poindexter was born on November 30, 1911 in Harlem, New York, to Anna and Clarence Poindexter.{{citation needed|date= April 2017}}}} Rose Araminta Poindexter was an actress, starring in films such as ''The Upright Sinner'' (1931). Poindexter and Ellison were married in late 1938. Rose was a stage actress, and continued her career after their marriage. In biographer [[Arnold Rampersad]]'s assessment of Ellison's taste in women, he was searching for one "physically attractive and smart who would love, honor, and obey him—but not challenge his intellect."<ref name="Als 2007"/> At first they lived at 312 West 122nd Street, Rose's apartment, but moved to 453 West 140th Street after her income shrank.<ref name="Als 2007" /> In 1941 he briefly had an affair with [[Sanora Babb]], which he confessed to his wife afterward, and in 1943 the marriage was over.<ref name="Als 2007" /> The couple officially divorced in 1945. As of April 2023, Poindexter remains alive at 111 years old.{{cn|date=April 2025}}

At the start of World War II, Ellison was classed [[Class 1-A|1A]] by the local [[Selective Service System]],<ref name=bio/> and thus eligible for the draft. However, he was not drafted. Toward the end of the war, he enlisted in the [[United States Merchant Marine]].<ref name= DivMinds />{{rp|67}} In 1946, he married Fanny McConnell, an accomplished person in her own right: a scholarship graduate of the [[University of Iowa]] who was a founder of the [[Negro People's Theater]] in Chicago and a writer for ''[[The Chicago Defender]]''.<ref name= "Fanny NYT">{{cite web|title= Fanny Ellison, 93, Dies; Helped Husband Edit 'Invisible Man'| first= Douglas | last= Martin| date=December 1, 2005 | work= The New York Times |url= https://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/01/arts/fanny-ellison-93-dies-helped-husband-edit-invisible-man.html|access-date= April 4, 2017}}</ref> While he wrote ''Invisible Man'', she helped support Ellison financially by working for American Medical Center for Burma Frontiers (the charity supporting [[Gordon S. Seagrave]]'s medical missionary work<ref name= "Fanny NYT" />). In 1946, Ellison composed and wrote the lyrics for at least two songs, "Flirty" and "It Would Only Hurt Me If I Knew".<ref>Ralph Ellison, "Flirty" & "It Would Only Hurt Me If I Knew" (Hollywood, CA: American Music Inc.) 1946.</ref> From 1947 to 1951, he earned some money writing book reviews but spent most of his time working on ''[[Invisible Man]]''. Fanny also helped type Ellison's longhand text<ref name= "Fanny NYT" /> and assisted him in editing the typescript as it progressed.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Ralph Ellison in Progress : The Making and Unmaking of One Writer's Great American Novel| last= Bradley |first= Adam |author-link=Adam Bradley (literary critic) | publisher= Yale University Press|year=2010| isbn=978-0300147131|location=New haven|pages=22|oclc = 5559544694}}</ref>

Published in 1952, ''[[Invisible Man]]'' explores the theme of a person's search for their identity and place in society, as seen from the perspective of the first-person narrator, an unnamed African American man, first in the Deep South and then in the New York City of the 1930s. In contrast to his contemporaries such as Richard Wright and [[James Baldwin]], Ellison created characters that are dispassionate, educated, articulate, and self-aware. Through the protagonist, Ellison explores the contrasts between the Northern and Southern varieties of racism and their alienating effect. The narrator is "invisible" in a figurative sense, in that "people refuse to see" him, and also experiences a kind of dissociation. The novel also contains taboo issues such as [[incest]] and the controversial subject of [[communism]].