His own man …

… Ralph Ellison in Opposition - Commentary. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Ralph Ellison grew up and came of age under what most might think the double jinx of being Negro under the Jim Crow laws of the South and Southwest and of the depredations of the Depression. Add to this that his father, who was a construction foreman, died when he was three. Ellison, however, didn’t see it that way. Not that life was easy for him. The absence of a father barely remembered was an irreplaceable loss. Money was for many years a serious problem. Race prejudice failed to depart in his lifetime. Yet Ellison never at any time chose to view himself as a victim.