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Richard Wright was born on a plantation near Natchez , Mississippi on
September 4, 1908 . He was the first child of Nathaniel Wright, a sharecropper,
and
Ella Wilson Wright, a schoolteacher. 1913-1914 - Nathaniel and Ella move to Memphis due to extreme poverty. Nathaniel soon leaves his family to live with another woman. 1917 – Richard's Uncle Silas, a relatively prosperous builder and saloon-keeper, was murdered by whites. No arrests were made, and Aunt Maggie, Ella, and the children fled to West Helena , Arkansas. 1918-1919 - Due to Ella's deteriorating health and the family's poverty, Richard was forced to transfer schools and find work. |
| 1920-1921 - Wright attended Seventh-Day Adventist school but rebeled against
its strict rules and transfered to public school, where he exceled academically
and makes friends. 1922 - Richard worked as a newsboy where he was able to read and was troubled by the lack of education he saw among young African Americans. 1925 - Wright graduated form Smith Robinson Junior High as valedictorian. 1927 - Wright began to read naturalist writers and moved to the South Side of Chicago. 1928 - After moving to Chicago , he became a Post Office clerk. During this time he became involved with the communist party, writing articles for both The Daily Worker and helped edit a literary magazine, New Challenge . 1930 - Chicago 's South Side sinks into the Depression. |
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1933 - Wright joined the Chicago John Reed Club, which was located at 1427 South Michigan Avenue. where he writes poetry. He also became a member of the Communist Party and was hired to supervise a youth club organized to counter
juvenile delinquency among African Americans on the South Side. 1936 - Wright became active in the African American South Side Writer's Group and published the story "Big Boy Leaves Home" in The New Caravan. 1937- He moved to New York and became the Harlem editor of The Daily Worker. 1939 - Four of Wright's stories were collected and published under the project Uncle Tom's Children, which emphasized writing programs for African Americans. 1940 - Wright received a Guggenheim Fellowship, which allowed him to complete his first novel, Native Son. 13 |
To read more about specific examples of the Chicagoan influence in Wright's Native Son, click the link ...