You can read this quote by Ralph Ellison, from his book of essays Shadow and Act (1964), in Bartlett’s Familiar Black Quotations. Read the quote in its full context here.
Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and founding director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He is also editor-in-chief of The Root. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.
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