Recognizing the week of April 20 through April 27, 2008 as RICHARD WRIGHT WEEK IN PHILADELPHIA.

WHEREAS, Richard Nathaniel Wright, the grandson of a slave, was born on September 4, 1908, the son of Nathan and Ella Wilson Wright on Rucker Plantation in Roxie, Mississippi; and

WHEREAS, His family moved to Memphis, Tennessee, in 1913, and soon after moving, his father, a former sharecropper, abandoned the family, leaving his mother to support them alone; and

WHEREAS, His family moved to Jackson, Mississippi to live with relatives, and he graduated as valedictorian of his 9th grade class in May 1925, but left school a few weeks after entering High School; and

WHEREAS, At the age of 15, Wright wrote his first story "

The Voodoo of Hell's Half-Acre

", and it was published in the

Southern Register

, a local black newspaper; and

WHEREAS, He married Ellen Poplar in 1941, and they had two daughters, Julia and Rachel; and

WHEREAS He later moved to Chicago and became the leader of the John Reed Club which was dominated by the Communist Party; and

WHEREAS, During this time, he edited

Left Front

and contributed to

New Masses Magazine

; and

WHEREAS, In 1937, he moved to New York and began work on a

Writers Project

guide book to the city entitled

New York Panorama

, and subsequently became the Harlem editor of the

Daily Worker

; and

WHEREAS, He gained national attention for his four short stories

Uncle Tom's Children

, which earned him a Guggenheim Fellowship Award; and

WHEREAS, This award allowed him to complete his first novel

Native Son

in 1940 and was subsequently the first book of the

Book of the

M

onth Club

selection by an African American author; and

WHEREAS, He is renowned for his novel,

Black Boy

and

American Hunger

, which was intended as the second book of

Black Boy

; and

WHEREAS, After moving to Paris in 1946, he wrote

The Outsider

,

Savage Holiday

and

Black Power

; and

WHEREAS, In 1949 he contributed to the anti-communist anthology

The God That Failed

, and his essay was published in the

Atlantic Monthly

three years earlier; and

WHEREAS, In 1955, he visited Indonesia for the Bandung Conference, and his recorded observations were published in his book "

The Color Curtain: A Report on the Bandung Conference"

; and

WHEREAS, His other works include

White Man, Listen!, The Long Dream, and Eight Men

; and a host of other publications; and

WHEREAS, He contracted amoebic dysentery on a visit to Africa, and over the next three years, his health deteriorated; and

WHEREAS He died in Paris in November, 1960, and left an unfinished book

A Father's Law

which was published by his daughter, in January 2008; and

WHEREAS, Richard Wright's most significant contribution was his desire to accurately portray blacks to white readers and he has been proclaimed to be one of the most influential African-American writers in the 20th Century; now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED, THAT THE PHILADELPHIA CITY COUNCIL, Hereby recognizes April 20 through April 27, as

RICHARD WRIGHT WEEK IN PHILADELPHIA.

End