Race, Nation, and Belonging
The Black Ball collects four of Ralph Ellison’s little-known early short stories. In “Boy on a Train,” a young boy (James) migrates out of Oklahoma City on a segregated train after his father’s death with his baby brother (Lewis) and his mother. In “Hymie’s Bull,” an unnamed Black narrator who lives as a bum, riding freight trains around the U.S. during the Great Depression, tells the reader about watching…
read analysis of Race, Nation, and Belonging
Racial Violence and Injustice
All four stories in The Black Ball show how, throughout most of the 20th century, white Americans used racist violence as a tool to terrorize Black people into accepting a subservient position in society. First, Ralph Ellison shows how Black Americans live in an atmosphere of constant threat. And second, he shows how Black people adapt to this situation by learning to accept racial hierarchy, avoid confrontation, and take responsibility for injustices that white people…
read analysis of Racial Violence and Injustice
Politics and Solidarity
In The Black Ball, Ralph Ellison’s bleak portrait of American racism shows how racism prevents Black Americans from living free, prosperous lives and how, as individuals, they can do very little to stop it. At the same time, The Black Ball has an optimistic undercurrent: Ellison also suggests that Black people can achieve progress through political organizing, and specifically by building coalitions across racial lines. In these stories, Ellison captures Black Americans’ fundamental desire…
read analysis of Politics and Solidarity
Childhood and Innocence
Two of the stories in The Black Ball—“The Black Ball” and “Boy on a Train”—feature children who begin to learn about the ugly truth of American racism while their parents struggle to decide whether and how to reveal it to them. In “Boy on a Train,” young James’s Daddy has died, and James’s mother (Mama) has to move him and his baby brother Lewis to a rural town, which is the…
read analysis of Childhood and Innocence
