Grave of Lewis Alfred Ellison, Fairlawn Cemetery

Ralph Ellison's father, Lewis Ellison, was buried in the segregated section of Fairlawn Cemetery in 1916. The grave is located in the plot at Block 22, Row 6, #22 (pin is in the proximtiy but not the precise location of the grave). The Ellison's stillborn son, L. A. Ellison was also buried there in 1912.

”I made my first trip to that burying ground when I was three, so I returned thirty-six years [later] to the place where much of my temperament was formed. Perhaps it is a law of civilization, of human life, that you must plant a man to make a man and the father’s tomb become the second womb of the son. Anyway, that was thirty-six years ago. Then the place seemed far from town, now the city has grown up around it, has absorbed it as life always absorbs death, and as I have absorbed that planting of my father. Now it has taken on a gentle serenity of waving willows and bending sycamores that was not so years ago, when the sheer terror of death looked out of the raw red clay mounds, the crude granite stones, the wild countryside. Now there is grass and tress and flowers and the usual polished stones the familiar names.”

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Callahan, John F. and Conner, Marc C. The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison. New York City, New York. Random House, 2019.