Books by Richard Wright

Richard Wright: Early Works  / Black Boy  / Native Son  / Uncle Tom's Children / 12 Million Black Voices  / Richard Wright: Later Works

The Outsider  /  Pagan Spain /  Black Power  /  White Man Listen!  / The Color Curtain /  Savage Holiday / The Long Dream

Eight Men: Short Stories  / Haiku / American Hunger / Lawd Today!

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1908 (4 September) -- Born in Natchez, Mississippi,  twenty miles east on Rucker's Plantation, the first child of Nathaniel Wright, a sharecropper, and Ella Wilson Wright, a schoolteacher, a profession she gave up soon after Richard was born for farm work.

1910 (24 September) -- Brother Leon Alan Wright born.

1911-1912 -- Family moves to Natchez with Ella Wright's family. Sets accidentally sets the house of  grandparents on fire.

1913-1914 -- Wrights move to Memphis in search of employment. Nathaniel works as a hotel porter and Ella works as cook for a white family. Nathaniel leaves family for another woman.

1915 (September) -- Enters school at Howe Institute, Memphis. Ella becomes ill and her sons are placed  in orphanage for a short time. Richard spends summer in Jackson, Mississippi with maternal grandparents.

1916 -- Ella moves with her sons to Elaine, Arkansas, to live with sister and brother-in-law, Maggie and Silas Hopkins. Richard becomes close to Silas. 

1917 -- Uncle Silas, a relatively prosperous builder and saloon-keeper, murdered by whites. No arrests are made, and Aunt Maggie, Ella, and the children flee to West Helena, Arkansas. Wright's schooling sporadic. Becomes acutely aware of southern racism and violence.

1918-1919 -- Forced to leave school to find work. Ella has stroke and becomes paralyzed. Children separated. Goes to live with an uncle and aunt in Greenwood, Mississippi. Returns unhappy, to Jackson, Mississippi.

1920 -- Attends the Seventh-Day Adventist school taught by his Aunt Addie and rebels against its strict rules.

1921 -- Transfers to the public Jim Hill School, where he excels academically and gains friends.

1922 -- Works at various jobs after school and during summer, including newsboy (where he is able to read) and work with an insurance agent allows him to travel around Mississippi. Notes with dismay illiteracy and lack of education among Negroes.

1921-1925 -- Racial rioting takes place in many American cities in the years following World War I. Brother of a high school friend is murdered by whites.

1923-1924 -- Attends Smith-Robertson Junior High. His story, "The Voodoo of Hell's Half-Acre," reportedly was published in the Jackson Southern Register.

1925 -- Graduates from Smith-Robertson as valedictorian. Refuses to deliver the graduation ceremony speech prepared by the principal and instead delivers his own. Leaves Jackson for  Memphis.

1927 -- Ella and Leon join Richard in Memphis. Spurred by author H.L. Mencken's Prefaces, reads American naturalist writers. In December, with Aunt Maggie, moves to the South  Side of Chicago.

1928 -- Ella and Leon also move to Chicago. Begins work at post office but later fails  medical exam due  to undernourishment

1929 -- Passes medical exam and returns to work. Moves family into a four room apartment. Begins to write more frequently.

1930 --  Hours at post office cut as Chicago's South Side sinks into the Depression.

1931 -- Publishes short story "Superstition" in Abbott's Monthly Magazine, a black-owned magazine, which fails before Richard is paid.

1933 -- Joins the Chicago John Reed Club. Writes revolutionary poetry.

1934 -- Joins Communist Party. Hired  to supervise a youth club organized to counter juvenile delinquency among South Side Negroes.

1935 -- Continues to publishes poetry, tries unsuccessfully to sell Lawd Today! (his first novel, originally titled "Cesspool."), expands acquaintance among left-wing writers, and is hired by the Federal Writer's Project. Lawd Today! published 1963, 28 years later, a few years

             after Wright's death.

1936 --  Active in the Negro South Side Writer's Group. Publishes  "Big Boy Leaves Home" in The

             New Caravan.

1937 --  Turns down a full-time postal position in Chicago. Moves to New York to write for the

              Daily Worker while working with the Writer's Project. His "Fire and Cloud" wins $500

              first prize in a  contest sponsored by Story magazine.

1938 -- Uncle Tom's Children published with good reviews. Becomes interested in the Robert Nixon case (an 18-year-old black man murdered a white woman with a brick). Wright researches the case and uses it as a documentary parallel to characters and events in Native

            Son.

1939 -- Marries Dhima Rose Meadman, a white ballet dancer. Ralph Ellison served as best man.

1940 -- Native Son published, becomes a best-seller, and receives many favorable reviews. Uncle Tom's Children reissued in an expanded edition. Marriage with Dhima Rose fails. Attempts to reconcile with his father.

1941 --  Marries Ellen Poplar, a Communist organizer from Brooklyn. Native Son, the play, developed by Wright with Paul Green, and produced on Broadway by Orson Welles and John Houseman. Wright collaborates with Edwin Rosskam on Twelve Million Black

              Voices.

1942 -- Daughter Julia is born. Withdraws from the Communist Party without publicity.

1944 -  Publishes  "I Tried to Be a Communist" in The Atlantic Monthly and "The Man Who Lived Underground" published in Cross Section.

1945 (March)-- Black Boy published, becomes a selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club. Receives excellent reviews and becomes a best-seller.

1946 (May-December) -- Travels to France as a guest of the French government. Received well by French intellectuals

1947 -- Returns to New York. Gathers Ellen and Julia and returns to Paris. Both become permanent expatriates.

1949 --  Rachel, a second daughter, born in January. Writes the film version of Native Son.

1950 -- Native Son, the film, shown in Buenos Aires, New York, Venice, and elsewhere. Plays the role of Bigger Thomas.

1952 -- Refuses to return to the United States because of risk of subpoena by an anti-Communist congressional investigating committee.

1953 (March)-- The Outsider published to mixed reviews. Travels throughout Africa's Gold Coast.

1954 -- Travels in Spain. Black Power and Savage Holiday published

1955 -- Visits Spain again. Attends the Bandung Conference.

1956 (March) -- The Color Curtain: A Report on the Bandung Conference published in English.Appeared several months before in French.

1957 -- Pagan Spain and White Man, Listen! published.

1958 (October) -- The Long Dream published, reviews mostly unfavorable.

1959 -- Daddy Goodness, adapted by Wright from Louis Spain's Pappa Bon Dieu, produced in Paris. Wright writes haiku.

1960 (28 November) -- The Long Dream, adapted from the novel, a week's run on Broadway. Dies of heart attack 28 November. Cremated at the Pere Lachaise cemetery on December 3 with a copy of Black Boy.

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updated 1 October 2007