Ralph Waldo Ellison was born March 1, 1914, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, to Lewis Alfred Ellison, a construction foreman who died when Ellison was only three years old, and the former Ida Milsap, a church stewardess, who used to bring him books she borrowed from the houses she cleaned. Ellison attended Frederick Douglass School in Oklahoma City, receiving lessons in symphonic composition. He began playing the trumpet at age eight and, at age eighteen, attended Tuskegee Institute in Montgomery, Alabama, studying music from 1933 to 1936. During that time, he worked at a variety of jobs including janitor, shoeshine boy, jazz musician, and freelance photographer. He also became a game hunter to keep himself alive, a skill he says he learned from reading Hemingway.
Completing only three years majoring in music at Tuskegee, Ellison sometimes referred to himself as a college dropout. Ironically, Ellison went on to receive 12 honorary doctorate degrees from such prestigious universities as Tuskegee Institute, Rutgers University, the University of Michigan, and Harvard University.
Moving to New York in 1936, Ellison met writers Richard Wright and Langston Hughes, which led to his first attempts at fiction and prompted his move to Harlem where he lived for more than 40 years with his wife, Fanny McConnell.
