Santa Fe Railroad Railyards

Unable to earn or borrow the $36 train fare to Alabama to attend Tuskegee Institute, Ralph Ellison teamed up with an experienced hobo to help him ride the rails in the summer of 1933. The two jumped a northbound train for St Louis before heading east to Louisville and south to Alabama. They chose the longer northern route because of the dangers facing Black hobos in the Deep South.

Escorted to the illustrious Tuskegee Institute by a veteran hobo and in-law of the J.D. Randolph family named Charlie Miller, Ellison jumped his first train headed east and south to Alabama with a switchblade in his pocket and a beret atop his head. Describing it later in straightforward terms, Ellison wrote:

“During June of 1933, I found myself traveling by freight train in an effort to reach Tuskegee Institute in time to take advantage of a scholarship granted me. Having little money and no time left in which to earn the fare for a ticket I grabbed an armful of a freight car, a form of illegal travel quite common during the Great Depression. In fact, so many young men, young women, prostitutes, gamblers and even some quite respectable but impoverished elderly and middle-aged couples were hoboing that it was quite difficult for the railroad to control such passengers."

“Sometimes I rode tops, sometimes coal cars,” Ellison explained in a letter to his mother immediately afterwards.

Ellison's experiences hopping trains and avoiding "bulls" (railroad detectives) were later translated into his short story, "Hymie's Bull," identified as his first work of short fiction.

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

Ellison, Ralph. Going to the Territory. New York City, New York. Vintage, 1986.

Jackson, Lawrence. Ralph Ellison: The Emergence of Genius. New York City, New York. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2002.