Ralph Ellison: An American Journey

Born in Oklahoma in 1914, Ralph Ellison traveled to Harlem in the 1930s and became a writer of short stories and criticism. Influenced by novelist Richard Wright and others of that tumultuous era, he found his life changed by the publication of "Invisible Man" in 1952 and his winning of the National Book Award. Through clips from the first-ever scenes adapted from "Invisibe Man" and interviews with a range of luminary black intellectuals such as Cornel West and Thulani Davis, this documentary reopens a debate about the changing role of the black artist and, more specifically, about Ellison as a focus of criticism in the 1960s and as an icon of American literature.