Richard Wright (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)

Biography

Richard Wright was the first of two sons born to sharecropper Nathan Wright and former schoolteacher Ella Wilson Wright in a village outside Natchez, Mississippi; all four of his grandparents had been slaves. After a move to Memphis, Tennessee, and his father's desertion before Richard was five, the family's circumstances became increasingly difficult as their poverty deepened. When, in 1915, Ella became unable to support her sons, they were temporarily placed in the Memphis Settlement House, a Methodist orphanage.

Subsequent relocations moved Richard back...

[The entire page is 5421 words long]

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