College Board Advanced Placement Teaching and Learning Conference

1. College Board Advanced Placement Teaching and Learning Conference Cultural Contexts for Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man Gigi Muirheid, presenter

2. Session Overview • 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”

3. PBS Interview concerning Invisible Man • Jackie Judd, Morning Edition, 1992, NPR • 50th anniversary of publication of Invisible Man • Two years before Ellison’s death, l994 • Avon Kirkland’s documentary, “Ralph Ellison: An American Journey” • Jackie Judd's interview

4. “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

5. “What Did I Do to Be So Black and Blue?” • 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”

6. “Battle Royal” • “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.

7. 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.”

8. 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.”

9. Booker T. Washington’s “The Atlanta Exposition Address,” 1895 • “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.”

10. 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.”

11. 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 self-hatred and rejection of his own group.” • “Segregation imposes upon individuals a distorted sense of social reality.”

12. “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-in-law, chapter 9, as IM walks toward his visit with Mr. Emerson’s son. • Peetie Wheatstraw, actual blues singer in Harlem, William Bunch

13. “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.”

14. “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?”

15. Marcus Garvey’s “Africa for the Africans” • 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.”

16. Marcus Garvey’s “Africa for the Africans” • 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