Biography of Richard Wright, Mississippi Author of Native Soon

On February 28, 1940, Richard Wright's novel "Native Son" was published. From the article:

"Richard Wright: A Biography
by Quinisha Logan (SHS)

Deep in the southern states of America, when this country struggled with changes, people not only suffered from poverty, hunger, and illnesses, but people endured racism and violence. These experiences colored people’s lives forever. Richard Nathaniel Wright was no exception. Out of the hardships and unpleasantness, Richard Wright formed ideas which became the central themes of his literary work.

Richard Wright was born in the backwoods of Mississippi on Rucker’s plantation, twenty-five miles from Natchez, on September 8, 1908, near the community of Roxie. Wright was born to an illiterate sharecropper father, Nathaniel Wright, and a school teacher mother, Ella Wilson Wright. Richard Wright’s roots are buried within the black, white, and Choctaw Indian races.

While Wright was still a toddler, Ella Wright also gave birth to Leon Alan Wright, Richard’s brother. Within a year to two years after Leon’s birth, the Wright began their long quest for a better life. Between the years 1911 and 1912, Ella Wright decided to leave the farm with her children. Ella Wright and her two sons traveled twenty-five miles to Natchez. Once in Natchez, they lived with Ella Wright’s family, the Wilsons. While living with the Wilsons, Richard accidentally set fire to his grandparents’ home.

After Nathaniel Wright’s hard work failed to produce a profit on his “rented” farm, he moved his family to Memphis, Tennessee. Upon arrival in Memphis, the Wright family took residence in a two-room tenement, which was not far from Beale Street. This city, which was filled with brothels, saloons, and storefront churches, forced Richard to encounter the terrors of crime, violence, and racism.

While growing up in Memphis, Richard felt the absence of his father more and more. . When Richard reached the age of six years old, his father deserted the family and lived with another woman. The desertion of Richard Wright’s father forced Richard to face another terror: poverty. “The image of my father became associated with the pangs of hunger,” wrote Wright in Black Boy, his autobiography, “Whenever I felt hunger, I thought of him with a deep biological bitterness.” With the heavy weight of supporting her family of three upon her shoulders, Ella Wright found jobs working as a housemaid and a cook. In the year 1915 Ella became ill, and her sons were forced to move into an orphanage.

Although Wright’s stay in the orphanage was brief, it was memorable. Once Wright left the orphanage, he attended school briefly at the Howard Institute. As time progressed, Ella Wright’s health worsened, forcing the Wright family to live with Ella’s sister and brother-in-law, Maggie and Silas Hopkins in Arkansas. Richard developed a close bond with his uncle Silas. However, Silas Hopkins, who was a prosperous builder and saloon-keeper, was murdered by some white people in 1917. Because no arrests were made, Maggie Hopkins, Ella Wright, and the children escaped to West Helena, Arkansas. During this time, money was scarce. Richard Wright left school in order to find work. Ella Wright’s health continued to deteriorate, and she eventually suffered from a stroke and became paralyzed.

Because of these tragic circumstances, Richard and Leon were separated. Richard Wright moved back to Mississippi, where he lived with an aunt and uncle in Greenwood. He then returned to Jackson because he was unhappy. There he lived with his religious grandparents and aunt Addis, who were members of the Seventh-Day Adventists. He did not share in their attitude toward religion. Because of this he felt that he was an outsider in their home. While at his grandparents’ home, he attended the Seventh-Day Adventist school that was taught by Addie. The strict rules caused him to rebel. A year later he transferred to Jim Hill School, a public school, where he excelled academically.

In the year of 1923, Wright attended Smith Robertson Junior High School where he published his first short story “The Voodoo of Hill’s Half-Acre” in the Jackson Southern Register. Because this story was inspired by local folklore, country sermons, and popular literature, his family criticized the piece, making Wright determined to become a writer.

Richard Wright graduated from Smith-Robertson Junior High School as class valedictorian, and at the age of seventeen he returned to Memphis with a ninth-grade education and a small amount of money. After Wright had lived in Memphis for two years, Ella Wright and Leon Wright joined him.

Although his stay in Memphis was not long, Richard Wright became acquainted with the works of writers whose prose changed Richard’s view of literature. Richard Wright began to study the work of H. L. Mencken. From Mencken, “Wright learned that words could serve as weapons with which to lash out at the world” (Contemporary Black Biography 294). Richard Wright’s study of Mencken led to the study of American naturalist writers such as Theodore Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson, and Sinclair Lewis. However, Richard Wright did not feel that his private studies were enough to keep him in Memphis. Accompanied by his aunt Maggie, he boarded a train that was bound for Chicago.

Although Richard Wright moved to a northern state where he hoped to escape from racial discrimination and other social injustices, his struggle continued. Richard Wright’s mother and brother joined him in Chicago where Wright quickly became bored with high school. After seeing no reason to continue his education, Richard Wright left school and obtained jobs in order to help support the family. The odd jobs that he obtained left him “many hats.” Wright worked as a dishwasher, a porter, a busboy, a street sweeper, a group leader at the South Side Boys Club, and a clerk at the Chicago Post Office. At the Chicago post office, Richard Wright became acquainted with many radical individuals. With the aid of some of these individuals, Wright became affiliated with the John Reed Club, a revolutionary writers’ organization. Wright’s associates encouraged him to pursue a career in writing. With his new inspiration, Richard Wright began to write poetry for various publications.

When Wright’s interest in race relations and radical thought increased, he joined the Communist party. For the first time in his life, Richard Wright felt that he found a peer group that shared the common goal of promoting racial and social equality. Wright stated in his contribution to the book The God That Failed, “It seemed to me that hear at last, in the realm of revolutionary expression, Negro experience could find a home, a functioning value and role.” His newfound happiness in the Communist party temporarily caused his loneliness to subside.

In 1935 Richard Wright traveled to New York City after the disbandment of the John Reed Clubs. While in New York City, he attended the American Writer’s Congress with other writers such as Langston Hughes, Malcolm Cooley, and Theodore Dreiser. He later returned to Chicago and found employment preparing guidebooks for the Federal Writer’s Project, a New Deal relief program for unemployed writers. In the beginning of 1936, Wright was transferred for a small period of time to the Federal Theater Project. In addition to these jobs, Richard Wright wrote for the Daily Worker. Feeling that his present writing was not enough to satisfy his hunger for writing, he began to work on a collection of short stories as well as write his first novel, Lawd Today. Unfortunately Richard Wright did not live to see Lawd Today published in 1963.

As his literary career expanded, conflicts with the Communist party grew. Richard Wright began to question the policies of Stalinism after he studied sociology, psychology, philosophy, and literature. More conflicts arose when he found that recruiting, organizing, and distributing party literature. In 1937, several Chicago Communists accused Richard Wright of betraying the Communist party. , Richard Wright tired of Chicago and moved to New York.

Wright had not been in New York for a long period of time when he published Uncle Tom’s Children. Richard Wright won a Works Progress Administration award for Uncle Tom’s Children in 1938. Uncle Tom’s Children received many good reviews. In the following year, Richard Wright married Dhima Rose Meadman, a ballet dancer. However, their marriage failed a year later. Later, Wright published Native Son, a Book-of-the-Month-Club selection, in 1940. Richard Wright sold over a quarter of a million copies of Native Son in six months. Native Son became Wright’s most famous and financially-successful book.

Wright’s life began to look promising. In 1941 Wright found someone that wanted to spend the remainder of his life with. His second wife was Ellen Poplar, a Communist organizer from Brooklyn. About this time Wright received the Springham Medal for Native Son from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. With the collaboration of Edwin Rosskan, Wright then completed Twelve Million Black Voices, his third book. In 1942 Ellen Poplar gave birth to his first child Julia. Her birth was followed by another great change in Wright’s life: his withdrawal from the Communist party. This break with the Communist party was not announced formally until 1944. Wright’s break with the Communist Party became known with the publication of “I Tried to be a Communist,” which could be found in The Atlantic Monthly, and “The Man Who Lived Underground,” which was published in Cross Section. Following his separation from the Communist party, Richard Wright published Black Boy, a book-of-the-Month selection that became a bestseller received excellent reviews.

After visiting France in May of 1946, Wright and his family decided to make France their final home. In 1947, the Wright family became a permanent expatriate of the United States of America. Richard Wright never returned to the United States of America again.

Following the birth of his second daughter Rachel in 1949,Wright published several novels. In 1953, The Outsider was published. The reviews Wright received for this novel were mixed. After returning from Spain in 1954, Richard Wright published Savage Holiday. In 1955, he returned to Spain and attended the Bandung Conference, which led to his writing The Color Curtain: A Report on The Bandung Conference. Also after his return from Spain, Richard Wright completed Pagan Spain and White Man Listen!. Although Richard Wright published many successful novels, Daddy Goodness, his last novel, received unfavorable reviews and was not successful. In 1960, Richard Wright abruptly died of a heart attack on November 28. Another Mississippi writer, Margaret Walker, has written a comprehensive book about Wright called Demonic Genius. It is little known that Wright wrote poetry, but in 1998 a book of 817 Haiku poems by Wright was published. Richard Wright wrote Haiku: This Other World during the last eighteen months of his life while living in France. The book, in addition, contains a fascinating introduction written by Wright’s daughter Julia, who today lives in Connecticut."