Rosa Louise McCauley was born in Tuskegee, Alabama to Leona Edwards and James McCauley, a teacher and a carpenter. She was born 48 years after the Civil War ended. The former Confederate states had passed new constitutions and electoral laws that effectively disfranchised black voters and, in Alabama, many poor white voters as well. Under the white-established Jim Crow laws, racial segregation was imposed in public facilities and retail stores in the South, including public transportation. Bus and train companies enforced seating policies with separate sections for blacks and whites. School bus transportation was unavailable in any form for black schoolchildren in the South, and black education was always underfunded.
Ralph Ellison, named after Ralph Waldo Emerson, was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, to Lewis Alfred Ellison and Ida Millsap. He was the grandson of former slaves. Ellison was born about 50 years after the end of the Civil War.
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