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