In 1989, he mounted his first solo show, "How It Feels to Be Colored Me," in Brooklyn. This show established Ligon's reputation for creating large, text-based paintings in which a phrase chosen from literature or other sources is repeated continuously, eventually dissipating into murk. "Untitled (I Am a Man)" (1988), a reinterpretation of the signs carried during the Memphis Sanitation Strike in 1968 — made famous by Ernest Withers's photographs of the march, is the first example of his use of text. In several other paintings, he overlaps repeating text to a point of illegibility, demanding the viewer’s attention as they try to make out the obscured words. Ligon’s "Prologue Series #2" (1991) includes the opening text of Ralph Ellison’s "Invisible Man", stenciled in various shades of black and grey, the words becoming less discernible as they progress towards the bottom of the composition. He uses this same passage of text in "Prologue Series #5" (1991), but obscures the words further, creating a further sense of abstraction and ambiguity about the subject.