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Richard Wright

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Richard Nathaniel Wright (September 4, 1908 – November 28, 1960) was an American author of novels, short stories, poems, and non-fiction. Much of his literature concerns racial themes, especially related to the plight of African Americans during the late 19th to mid-20th centuries, who suffered discrimination and violence in the South and the North. Literary critics believe his work helped change race relations in the United States in the mid-20th century.

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Early life and education

A historic marker in Natchez, Mississippi, commemorating Richard Wright, who was born near the city
Childhood in the South
Richard Nathaniel Wright was born on September 4, 1908 at Rucker's Plantation, between the train town of Roxie and the larger river city of Natchez, Mississippi. His memoir, Black Boy, covers the interval in his life from 1912 until May 1936. He was the son of Nathan Wright (c. 1880–c. 1940) who was a sharecropper and Ella (Wilson) (b. 1884 Mississippi – d. Jan 13, 1959 Chicago, Illinois) who was a schoolteacher. His parents were born free after the Civil War; both sets of his grandparents had been born into slavery and freed as a result of the war. Each of his grandfathers had taken part in the U.S. Civil War and gained freedom through service: his paternal grandfather Nathan Wright (1842–1904) had served in the 28th United States Colored Troops; his maternal grandfather Richard Wilson (1847–1921) escaped from slavery in the South to serve in the US Navy as a Landsman in April 1865.

Richard's father left the family when Richard was six years old, and he did not see Richard for 25 years. In 1911 or 1912 Ella moved to Natchez, Mississippi to be with her parents. While living in his grandparents' home he accidentally set the house on fire. Wright's mother was so mad that she beat him until he was unconscious. In 1915 Ella put her sons in Settlement House, a Methodist orphanage, for a short time. In 1916 his mother moved with Richard and his younger brother to live with her sister Maggie (Wilson) and Maggie's husband Silas Hoskins (born 1882) in Elaine, Arkansas. This part of Arkansas was in the Mississippi Delta where former cotton plantations had been. The Wrights were forced to flee after Silas Hoskins "disappeared," reportedly killed by a white man who coveted his successful saloon business. After his mother became incapacitated by a stroke, Richard was separated from his younger brother and lived briefly with his uncle Clark Wilson and aunt Jodie in Greenwood, Mississippi. At the age of 12, he had not yet had a single complete year of schooling. He was, however, enrolled at Howe Institute in Memphis from 1915 to 1916. Soon Richard with his younger brother and mother returned to the home of his maternal grandmother, which was now in the state capital, Jackson, Mississippi, where he lived from early 1920 until late 1925. His grandparents, still mad at him for destroying their house, repeatedly beat Wright and his brother. But while he lived there, he was finally able to attend school regularly. He attended the local Seventh-day Adventist school from 1920 to 1921, with his aunt Addie as his teacher. After a year, at the age of 13 he entered the Jim Hill public school in 1921, where he was promoted to sixth grade after only two weeks. In his grandparents' Seventh-Day Adventist home, Richard was miserable, largely because his controlling aunt and grandmother tried to force him to pray to God. Wright later threatened to move out of his grandmother's home when she would not allow him to work on Saturdays. His aunt's and grandparents' overbearing attempts to control caused him to permanently hate Christians and their works.

At the age of 15, while in eighth grade, Wright published his first story, "The Voodoo of Hell's Half-Acre," in the local Black newspaper Southern Register. No copies survive. In Chapter 7 of Black Boy, he described the story as about a villain who sought a widow's home.

After excelling in grade school and junior high, in 1923, Wright earned the position of class valedictorian of Smith Robertson Junior High School from which he graduated in May 1925. He was assigned to write a paper to be delivered at graduation in a public auditorium. Later, he was called to the principal's office, where the principal gave him a prepared speech to present in place of his own. Richard challenged the principal, saying "the people are coming to hear the students, and I won't make a speech that you've written." The principal threatened him, suggesting that Richard might not be allowed to graduate if he persisted, despite his having passed all the examinations. He also tried to entice Richard with an opportunity to become a teacher. Determined not to be called an Uncle Tom, Richard refused to deliver the principal's address, written to avoid offending the white school district officials. The principal put pressure on one of Richard's uncles to speak to the boy and get him to change his mind, but Richard continued to be adamant about presenting his own speech, and refused to let his uncle edit it. Despite pressure even from his classmates, Richard delivered his speech as he had planned.

In September that year, Wright registered for mathematics, English, and history courses at the new Lanier High School, constructed for black students in Jackson—the state's schools were segregated under its Jim Crow laws—but he had to stop attending classes after a few weeks of irregular attendance because he needed to earn money for family expenses.

The next year, in November of 1925 at the age of 17, Wright moved on his own to Memphis, Tennessee. He planned to have his mother come to live with him when he could support her, and in 1926, his mother and younger brother did rejoin him. Shortly thereafter, Richard resolved to leave the Jim Crow South and go to Chicago. His family joined the Great Migration, when tens of thousands of blacks left the South to seek opportunities in the more economically prosperous northern and mid-western industrial cities.

Wright's childhood in Mississippi, as well as in Memphis, Tennessee, and Elaine, Arkansas, shaped his lasting impressions of American racism.

Richard Wright Mother School South Born Black Younger