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Ralph Ellison's Juneteenth is dedicated "To That Vanished Tribe into Which I Was Born: The American Negroes."1 I am a member of that "tribe." Our "village" was Deep Deuce, the Negro quadrant of Northeast Oklahoma City from Territory days through the early 1960s. Our "village elders" included many men and women of Du Bois' Talented Tenth, dedicated to mutual support and advancement of the race. Mr. Ellison was not only our village elder and griot but also America's.Like the tradition in Africa, Ralph Ellison's weaving of story, history, and music tapped into the consciousness of a society undergoing continual growth pains. His work reminded America and American Negroes of who we were, who we are, and what we yet can become. Like any true son of the soil, he carried the village-Deep Deuce-with him, without being bowed by the burden, for he turned Oklahoma red clay into art for others to celebrate, and from which they could learn and grow strong.For decades, some critics have pondered the question: if Ellison loved Oklahoma so much, why did he not return more often? I, in turn, pondered why one would ask. What was so difficult to understand? In many ways, he never left the Territory, only added to its reach. Note, I said the "Territory"-as a shorthand for the metaphysical place, a subjective experience embedded in, but transcending, objective data.When Ralph Ellison needed a more direct and deep connection, he did not need to travel to the black West; the West came East, embodied in his dearest friend since childhood, Mr. Jimmy Stewart. I was honored to be Jimmy Stewart's niece in the extended family system. When I arrived in New York City in the 1970s, it was time for Uncle Jimmy to make the customary introductions: for me to pay my respects to the Ellisons, and for them to give me their (informal) blessing.We shared a love of Harlem and of Deep Deuce. I was born in Harlem; lived in Deep Deuce. Ellison was born in Deep Deuce; lived in Harlem. Both of us saw these worlds in ways that contradicted the fashion of black sociologists and political scientists of the 1970s and later. It made him something of an outlier in his era; and made me an outlier in mine. An insistence upon valuing the internal lives of people was not part of the econometric and statistical approach to American history that was overtaking the field when I was in graduate school.Perhaps that was the beginning of my sense that the Ellisons' apartment was a refuge. Not only as a connection with the village and tribe, but as a hope that there could be a future for scholars who valued the intangible as much as, and sometimes more than, the tangible.Ellison's complex world view, nurtured in Oklahoma, insisted that the tangible aspects of life in Harlem-the "ruggedness of life there, . . . the hardship, the poverty, the sordidness, the filth"-must not be allowed to override the "something else" that is "subjective, willful, and complexly and compellingly human." Ellison believed this ineffable quality "makes for our strength" and "our endurance and our promise."2The "something else" that Ellison entreats other artists and intellectuals to value is, I believe, coterminous with the cultural heritage that Ellison credits to his Oklahoma roots. In his own words:We were forced into segregation, but within that situation we were able to live close to the larger society and to abstract from that society enough combination of values-including religion and hope and art-which allowed us to endure and impose our own idea of what the world should be and of what man should be, and of what American society should be. I'm not speaking of power here, but of vision, of values and dreams. Yes, and of will.3There was no denial of racism in the Ellison household. Indeed, the center of gravity for me in the apartment was a photograph-nay, one of THE (original) photographs-of fire hoses and police dogs in Birmingham, Alabama, turned on civil rights demonstrators, including children. …

A Visit to the Village Elder: From Deep Deuce to Harlem and Back Again