Claremont McKenna College

Black Writers in America: Ralph Ellison

CHARLES JOHNSON

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1995

When Charles Johnson captured the National Book Award for Middle Passage (1990), he received a formal recognition that no African-American male had been granted since Ralph Ellison was so honored some 40 years earlier. In his acceptance speech for that award, Johnson acknowledged the singularity and continuing importance of Ellison's achievement. "Proponents of the black arts movement of the 1960s," said Johnson to his rapt audience, "have urged us to control our images. But since the late 1940s ... Ellison has counseled us to expand our images." It is perfectly fitting, therefore, that as part of the Gould Center's continuing series, Black Writers in America, Johnson should engage his own writing with that of Ellison, who is acknowledged as among the premier American writers of the 20th century.

Preparation, expansiveness of view, and devotion to his craft have always marked Johnson's artistic development. An early interest in drawing resulted in his publishing his first cartoon at age 17. Following a distinguished scholastic career, Johnson-heeding poet Amiri Baraka's directive to black artists to direct their talents toward the enrichment and edification of black people-drew assiduously, and in 1970 published two collections of cartoons and hosted Charlie's Pad, a PBS television series on drawing.

It was in the early 1970s that Johnson, under the tutelage of famed novelist John Gardner, began to broaden his range of expression and find his voice as a writer. He published his first novel, Faith and the Good Thing, in 1974 and followed with Oxherding Tale (1982), The Sorcerer's Apprentice: Tales and Conjurations (1986), and Being and Race: Black Writing Since 1970 (1988). As work begins on a major motion picture version of Middle Passage, Johnson is already at work on an epic historical novel about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.