reconstructing the remainder of the novel from
Ellison’s notes, Callahan presented Juneteenth, the
finished product, in 1999. For the most part crit-
ics have been generally receptive of Callahan’s at-
tempt and Ellison’s legacy.
While Juneteenth suffers by comparison to In-
visible Man, it clearly illustrates Ellison’s stylistic
genius and his continuing exploration of African-
American history. The novel follows the interac-
tions of two characters, Reverend Hickman and
Senator Sunraider (known as Bliss when he was
a child). Although the senator is a racist southern
politician, when Reverend Hickman learns about a
plot to assassinate him, he tries to warn the senator
but is too late. Wounded in the attempted assas-
sination, the senator calls the reverend to his bed-
side and, in a series of dream-like flashbacks, their
family relationship is unveiled. Sunraider, who has
been “passing” for white, is a victim of his own
self-hatred. As a child, Sunraider, who was called
Bliss, was placed in the care of his uncle, Hickman,
a former jazz musician who became a traveling
preacher. During his travels, Hickman took Bliss
along with him as a performer and child preacher.
Aided by memory and Hickman’s storytelling,
Sunraider recovers his past and his identity to find
psychological, though not physical, healing.
Ellison uses Sunraider’s healing process as a
metaphor for the importance of historiography
and storytelling—the need to remember the past
in healthy ways. In those spaces where Sunraider’s
memory fails him, the audience is invited to tell
their own stories of the African-American past in
order to confront the negative portrait of African-
American life, embodied by Sunraider’s choice to
pass as white rather than embrace his black iden-
tity. As Ellison suggests, this process will finally
guarantee that all African Americans will know
the freedom and the possession of self promised
by the Union troops on “Juneteenth,” the unoffi-
cial holiday celebrating black emancipation.BIBLIOGRAPHY
Butler, Robert J. “The Structure of Ralph Ellison’s
Juneteenth.” College Language Association Journal
46, no. 3 (March 2003): 291–311.
Johnson, Loretta. “History in Ellison’s Juneteenth.”
Studies in American Fiction 32, no. 1 (Spring
2004): 81–99.
Yukins, Elizabeth. “An ‘Artful Juxtaposition on the
Page’: Memory, Perception, and Cubist Technique
in Ralph Ellison’s Juneteenth.” PMLA 119, no. 5
(October 2004): 1247–1263.
Tracie Church GuzzioJuneteenth 293