He was born on Sept. 4, 1908, just under 50 years from the end of slavery and into a segregated South.
Wright was an American author of powerful, sometimes controversial novels, short stories and non-fiction. Much of his literature concerns racial themes. His work helped redefine discussions of race relations in America in the mid-20th century. Wright was born on the Rucker Plantation near Roxie, Mississippi, the first of two sons to Ella Wilson, an elementary schoolteacher, and Nathaniel Wright, an illiterate, alcoholic sharecropper.
In late 1912, the family relocated to Memphis and Nathaniel abandoned the family several months later. In 1914, when Ella became ill, Wright and his brother were placed in the temporary care of the Settlement House, a Methodist orphanage. That was a period in his life where young Richard was begging for food.
In 1916, the boys were reunited with their mother, and they relocated to Jackson, Mississippi to move in with his maternal grandmother Margaret Wilson.
Later, the family moved in with Wright's aunt and uncle in Elaine but left after racists murdered Wright's uncle, Silas Hoskins, in 1916.
Hoskins owned a properous saloon catering to black lumbermen who, with companies like Chicago Mill, were deforesting Phillips County of vast tracts of its valuable timber resources. As the story goes, some Elaine white men jealous of Hoskins prosperity murdered his uncle to confiscate his property
At least two of his works -- Black Boy and Long Black Song - are a reflection on his life and times in Elaine. He left Elaine just three years before the "Red Summer" race riots in 21 American cities, including Elaine. Those works and others also reflect the racial tensions in both Memphis and Jackson.
The family then fled to West Helena, where they lived in fear in rented rooms for several weeks.
At the age of fifteen, Wright penned his first story, "The Voodoo of Hell's Half-Acre". It was published in Southern Register, a local black newspaper in Jackson.
