Later, she went to jail for violating undemocratic zoning ordinances during the 1930s.
When Ralph was three and his only surviving sibling, Herbert, was four months old, their father died in an accident. Mrs. Ellison worked as a domestic in white homes and served as an apartmenthouse custodian, but Ralph Ellison never considered himself deprived.
Among those who inspired the young Ellison —besides his determined mother—were the men who frequented the local drugstore and barbershop, swapping tales, and believing in "the spirit of the law, if not in its application." There were also the jazz musicians who "stumbled upon the freedom lying within the restrictions of their musical tradition." Later in his career, Ellison would write essays about some of these jazzmen, including blues singer Jimmy Rushing, who at one time worked for Lewis Ellison as an ice carrier, and guitarist Charlie Christian, who was a classmate of Ellison's younger brother in elementary school.
Perhaps "aware of the suggestive power of names and the magic involved in naming," Lewis Ellison named his son "Ralph Waldo" in honor of Emerson, the great American philosopher-poet. In school Ellison disguised his middle name by using the initial W, and he avoided Emerson's works "like the plague," he recalls.
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