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26 Okla. City U. L. Rev. 1041 (2001)
Ralph Ellison, Fredric Wertham, M.D., and the Lafargue Clinic: Civil Rights and Psychiatric Services in Harlem

handle is hein.journals/okcu26 and id is 1049 raw text is: RALPH ELLISON, FREDRIC WERTHAM, M.D., AND THE LAFARGUE CLINIC: CIVIL RIGHTS AND PSYCHIATRIC SERVICES N HARLEM JAMES E. REIBMAN* One must descend to the basement and move along a confusing mazelike hall to reach it. Twice the passage seems to lead against a blank wall; then at last one enters the brightly lighted auditorium. And here, finally, are the social workers at the reception desks; and there, waiting upon the benches rowed beneath the pipes carrying warmth and water to the floors above, are the patients. One sees white-jacketed psychiatrists carrying charts appear and vanish behind screens that form the improvised interviewing cubicles. All is an atmosphere of hurried efficiency; and the concerned faces of the patients are brightened by the friendly smiles and low-pitched voices of the expert workers. One has entered the Lafargue Psychiatric Clinic.' When Ralph Ellison moved to Harlem in 1936, he met Langston Hughes, who introduced him to Richard Wright.2 Ellison and Wright became fast friends because they shared a sophisticated interest in the craft of writing, as well as sharing left-wing political sensibilities. Their intellectual and social relationship deepened to the extent that Ellsion * James E. Reibman teaches literature and media studies at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania. A specialist on law and literature, he has published widely on legal writers of the Scottish Enlightenment and on Samuel Johnson and his circle. His most resent lectures and writings are concerned with the graphic novel, popular culture, and violence in the media. Reibman is the biographer of Fredric Wertham, M.D., and has annotated Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent and is co-editor of the forthcoming Fredric Wertham Reader. Professor Reibman received his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and his Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh. 1. RALPH ELLISON, Harlem Is Nowhere, in SHADOW AND ACT 294, 294 (Quality Paperback Book Club 1994) (1964) (unpublished manuscript written for Magazine of the Year in 1948). 2. John Hersey, A Completion of Personality: A Talk with Ralph Ellison, in CONVERSATIONS WITH RALPH ELLISON 272,292-93 (Maryemma Graham & Amritjit Singh eds., 1995). 1041

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