At the beginning of Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, the narrator is a young teenager. He has just written a speech, and is invited to an event to present it. Unfortunately, that is not the main event. The group of young black boys is first forced to watch a white girl dance a semi-strip tease. After the first humiliation, they are then blindfolded and forced to fight. After the narrator is pounded to a bloody pulp, the white man in charge lets the boys go for some money on the ground. Unfortunately, there are electrodes on the ground too, shocking most of the boys. At the end, the narrator is finally able to deliver his speech. When he is finished, he is given a brand new leather satchel, and a scholarship to the local black college.

In his junior year at the college, he is driving one of the white investors of the school, Mr. Norton, around the school grounds and the surrounding area. He talks to a local black man that has impregnated his own daughter. After hearing the story, Mr. Norton becomes faint, and asks for whisky. The only place to get whisky at the time is a bar that is off-limits to students. The narrator manages to get Mr. Norton inside, but while leaving, he is pushed, and cuts his head on the screen door. When they return to the school, the narrator is expelled by the Chancellor of the school, Dr. Bledsoe.

Dr. Bledsoe decides however to give the narrator a second chance. He is to go to New York with eight letters addressed to white beneficiaries of the school, and they are to give the young man employment. The letters actually read that they shouldn't employ the narrator, as it is punishment. The narrator is then stranded in New York, when he starts work at a paint factory. His first day there, he is involved in an accident, and then 'released' from the factory hospital when he gets better.

Later on, while walking to his apartment, he witnesses an eviction in progress. He gives a rousing speech, that snaps the group witnessing it into action, moving everything back inside the apartment. When the police arrive, he runs across the rooftops, chased by a single white man, who treats him to a free dinner and offers him a job with his group. He moves, and then is paid $60 per week. I'm not sure what happens after that, as I didn't get any further than that in the book. Sorry.