This chapter examines the two major biographies published on Ralph Ellison since his death in 1994. Lawrence Jackson’s Ralph Ellison: Emergence of Genius (2002) and Arnold Rampersad’s Ralph Ellison (2007) present vastly different portraits of Ellison’s achievement. Where Jackson’s presentation of Ellison’s life and achievement is largely triumphant, Rampersad sees Ellison’s life as a disappointment. At stake is not simply differing interpretations regarding the life of a major novelist or the merit of his work, but the need to grapple with the still contested meaning of Ellison’s life as a representative black intellectual in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement.