Home of Lucretia Brown

Ralph Ellison was fond of his father's sister, Aunt Lucretia Brown, who was Ralph's only connection in Oklahoma City to his father's family after his death when Ralph was a small child. Brown lived in a historically-Black enclave known as West Town. While not as developed as the Black enclave on the northeast side, West Town was a thriving community with its own churches, schools and retail. Ralph and his mother and brother moved into an apartment in the rear of Aunt Lucretia's home in 1924.

Lucretia Ellison Brown was Ellison’s paternal aunt, born along with her brother Lewis and eight other children to Alfred and Harriet Walker Ellison in Abbeville, South Carolina. Lucretia and the Brown family moved to Oklahoma about the same time as Lewis and Ida Ellison. The Browns lived in West Town, a small Black enclave set apart from the hub of the Black community, on Peach Avenue. Here the Ellison and Brown children often played on summer evenings, and on more than one occasion, after Lewis’ death, Ida would come to find a roof over her head. To Lucretia, or “Aunt Teat,” as well as to his father and the Ellisons, Ralph attributed his humor and Ellisonian pride. Even as a laundress, Lucretia was described as haughty towards her Black patrons as well as her sister-in-law Ida’s more prosperous extended family made up of the likes of the Randolphs and Slaughters. Much of her “bristling hauteur” came from the strength of the Ellison patriarch Alfred, about whom Ellison would later write: “I was impressed that my grandfather was a man of stern principles and of considerable courage—as was illustrated by the account of his refusing to leave Abbeville after one of his friends was lynched…This was strong stuff, admirable stuff—which I could understand because racial violence was no stranger to Oklahoma. Needless to say, I hoped that I had inherited such courage. My aunt liked to recall her father’s strong part patriarchal control of her brothers…On two occasions following my father’s death, Herbert, my younger brother, and I lived with her and her three children, and there were frequent occasions for her to warn us punishment…Lucretia and her children were in fact brought to Oklahoma by my parents and lived with them until my aunt, an excellent laundress—really an artist—was able to set up house for her family. I’m told that her husband, from whom she was by then divorced, was a surveyor.” 

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

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Rampersad, Arnold. Ralph Ellison A Biography. New York City, New York. Vintage, 2007.