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.
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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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