Ralph Waldo Ellison, an American writer and educator, was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and educated at Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University).

His best-known work, and only novel, Invisible Man (1952), expounds the theme that American society willfully ignores blacks.

He received the National Book Award for fiction in 1953.

Shadow and Act, a collection of his essays, was published in 1964.

He was one of the first recipients of the National Medal of Arts in 1985.