February is Black History Month:
Just a reminder that the month of February is devoted to the prominent African-Americans who have shaped our lives, by both artistic achievements and creating social change for all races.
Today let's take a look at Ralph Ellison (courtesy of Biography.com):
"Teacher, editor, and writer, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He studied at Harvard (1907 BA) and was the first African-American to attend Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar (1910 B Litt). He studied philosophy at the University of Berlin (1910-11) and attended lectures by Henri Bergson in Paris. Returning to the USA, he taught philosophy at Howard University (1912-17), gained his Ph D at Harvard (1918), and resumed his teaching career at Howard as professor of philosophy (1918-53). He first became known as the editor of The New Negro: An Interpretation (1925), an anthology of African-American writers associated with the Harlem Renaissance. He published other anthologies featuring the literary work of African-Americans, as well as books, essays, and reviews that were influential in defining African-Americans' distinctive traditions and culture and the role they might play in bringing blacks into mainstream American society. In The Negro and His Music (1936) he placed African-Americans' music into the spectrum of African and world folk music, while his Negro in Art (1941) was one of the first works to stress the influence of African art on modern Western painting and sculpture."
If you get a chance everyone, read (or reread) the novel "Invisible Man", another notable work from Mr. Ellison. A great story of a young black man's struggles against society and his corresponding self-discovery.
February 5th... In Memorandum
Ossie Davis (1917-2005)
NEW YORK (AP) -- Ossie Davis, the actor distinguished for roles dealing with racial injustice on stage, screen and in real life, has died, an aide said Friday. He was 87.
Davis, the longtime husband and partner of actress Ruby Dee, was found dead Friday in his hotel room in Miami Beach, Florida, according to officials there. He was making a film called "Retirement," said Arminda Thomas, who works in his office in suburban New Rochelle and confirmed the death.
Davis, who wrote, acted, directed and produced for the theater and Hollywood, was a central figure among black performers of the last five decades. He and Dee celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in 1998 with the publication of a dual autobiography, "In This Life Together."
Both had key roles in the television series "Roots: The Next Generation" (1978), "Martin Luther King: The Dream and the Drum" (1986) and "The Stand" (1994). Davis appeared in several Spike Lee films, including "School Daze," "Do the Right Thing" and "Jungle Fever," some with Dee.
In 2004, Davis and Dee were among the artists selected to receive the Kennedy Center Honors.
When not on stage or on camera, Davis and Dee were deeply involved in civil rights issues and efforts to promote the cause of blacks in the entertainment industry. They nearly ran afoul of the anti-Communist witch-hunts of the early 1950s, but were never openly accused of any wrongdoing.
As black performers, they found themselves caught up in the social unrest fomented by the then-new Cold War and the growing debate over social and racial justice in the United States.
"We young ones in the theater, trying to fathom even as we followed, were pulled this way and that by the swirling currents of these new dimensions of the Struggle," Davis wrote in the joint autobiography.
He lined up with black socialist reformer DuBois and singer Paul Robeson, remaining fiercely loyal to the singer even after Robeson was denounced by other black political, sports and show business figures for his openly communist and pro-Soviet sympathies.
While Hollywood and, to a lesser extent, the New York theater world became engulfed in McCarthyism and red-baiting controversies, Davis and Dee emerged from the anti-communist fervor unscathed and, in Davis' view, justifiably so.
"We've never been, to our knowledge, guilty of anything -- other than being black -- that might upset anybody," he wrote.