Who are the community leaders in Battle Royal by Ralph Ellison?

's initiation
story "The " is the first chapter in his novel .  The unnamed
narrator and other black young men in "The Battle Royal" fight blindfolded in front of
a group of the town's prominent white leaders:

Suddenly I
heard the school superintendent, who had told me to come, yell,
"Bring up the shines, gentlemen! Bring up the little shines!"

And:

They were all there:
bankers, lawyers, judges, doctors, fire chiefs,
teachers, merchants. Even one of the more fashionable
pastors.

The scene is like
Mardi Gras.  The white men have been drinking, and they crave sex and
violence.  They lure a half-nude white woman in front of the boys.  They even dupe the young men
by placing electrified coins on the floor for them to pick up.  The story is full of symbolism
and anthropomorphic : the white men are compared to animals, a pack of wolves surrounding a
prey.

The focus of an initiation story is the journey to self-discovery, and
the Invisible Man has a long road ahead.  After battling it out with Tatlock, the biggest of the
boys, the Invisible Man must give a speech, his mouth full of blood.  The , of course, is that
at the white man think they are doing the Invisible Man a favor by listening to his speech and
giving him a scholarship to an all-black university.  After being fed to the wolves and then
given some carefully selected scraps, the narrator is more confused than honored,the existential
predicament of anyone in an alien and hostile world.