Race in the South

Ralph Ellison was born in Oklahoma City, and during his childhood he encountered opposition from the city's white establishment. His mother was persecuted for her political activities on behalf of the Socialist Party Oklahoma's governor during Ellison's early years was the white supremacist "Alfalfa Bill" Murray. Murray established a very unfriendly atmosphere for blacks in Oklahoma, and the state saw at least one serious race riot during that period. Although Oklahoma is not a part of the South proper and was still Indian territory during the Civil War, the state has absorbed a Southern cultural heritage from its neighbors Texas and Arkansas. Part of this heritage included Jim Crow laws, the system of de jure and de facto (meaning unwritten but enforced) racial segregation laws that persisted until the 1960s.

Ellison believed an effort was made by the state to ensure that black students...