Richard Wright; Black Boy

Major funding for this program was provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Additional funding was provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The Ford Foundation the Foundation for Public Broadcasting in Mississippi the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Black Programming Consortium it was right who was one of the people who who made me conscious. Of the need to struggle. You got to see what I mean. Later I thought I was say that I agree with that only with that still in the sense of him describing and analyzing the whole existence of black people as an oppressed nation. That's priceless. All my life I mean being killed because all white girls have it right. Prove it back radical right. Considerably better than most white writers of his day. And after native son the condescending attitude toward black writers was all he said. Nothing comes before

my. Program was it was made about anything else. What they had to do was but. Few. People I can't imagine what it had to be to live. Under conditions of not only repression. Tremendous racist. Discrimination. But no outlet. For.

Talking about it or seeing a way of changing. In the early 1940s I would say that most white Americans. Never. Thought about things they never thought about blacks except maybe as maids and porters. And there was no consciousness of all. Of what was going on in the country. They had been objects they'd been photographs and images they had in Chile simply voiceless white people only knew black people in certain kinds of movies and films. It was black musicals. It was shuffle along the comic routine. It was a wonderful jazz music of course. People talk about in terms of the Harlem Renaissance the jazz age all of that was part of the creative imagery of black people that right had to transform native son came out all of a sudden bam right between the eyes.

And he kept like this him like a giant out of them out to nudge him riding with him. I saw the book right after it had come out. I'm sure it was even on the phone. I simply stopped to exist. I. Missed. School for at least a week that was. I was just I couldn't function for two weeks. What stunned American readers about native son was a searing indictment of racism. This was unprecedented in 1940. Equally astonishing for the time it was written by a negro. The radical young writer Richard Wright. Wright said he gave native son everything he had because once America read it he might never get another chance. He became a runaway bestseller. Then he became one of the nation's most celebrated authors. He had figured out very early on that black people had no opportunity to save one evening. And so the fact that he discovered that one could do it in

writing and do it ever so articulately meant that millions of people could not have a voice through him and he was so fired up by what he was doing. One of the things characteristics to write was his determination and stubbornness. Wright said his story in Chicago during the 1930s the depression. He knew the city well. Like thousands of other blacks he applied the south for a better life than norm of life. Most never found. Negroes living in what was known as the black belt. Chicago's South Side. And the sound site. If you can. Look back in those days was a very tight restricted area. The black community was held in by restrictive covenants. There was something called the kitchen that these apartment buildings had been cut off. The rent was the

highest in the city and the area had the problem with spiting babies native son opens in a kitchenette. That's the Thomases family from the south. Awaken the story's central character is bigger. The eldest son in fatherless household. Is a good kid. I think right was very conscious that bigger was a composite of many things. One goes is right himself. Right.

Was writing like other people that suggested that the environment had a very strong influence on the individual. He wanted people to say. Look at me. I'm human. I suffer. I mean. My life is miserable. It doesn't have to be this way. I wish I could be from here but my one of those things. I had a chance. To help came out like just wanted to grow old enough to understand. Sometimes I feel like all. About what you want them any

bigger Thomas is representative of all black man's attempts to try to come to grips with their own internal demons as well as the forces of the problem that that right understood is that black men have to deal with tremendous problems every day of their lives and yet nobody understands that. And if you don't understand those problems you can't have any sympathy. So what he wants us to do is to shock us into recognition. Bigger gets a job driving for a wealthy white family that night. He drives their daughter Mary to a rendezvous with her communist boyfriend John and Mary Drink. Later bigger has to carry. On going to her bedroom. When her blind mother interrupts again tries to fight. The day.

All right. Do. You want to sleep where are you. I hear you moving about. Here and. Here is a young man intimidated by the voice of a white woman. Representing the power of white lies. Why. Because he's afraid that this woman will discover him in the room and he is so terribly afraid of this white woman and what she represents. He puts that on there so she can make it sound so that is very much and it's important in the reading in the interpretation of the novel for us to understand that is accidental.

In order for us to then understand the depth. Of that fear. Right. My biggest fear a driving force throughout the remainder of my life I fear that cause because I do terrible things. It was this emotion right felt that corrupted race relations in America. It was a terror of what might happen if you stepped out of. Remember he was a part of this even in its transformed state. In Chicago it was still the same. So you were always having to be on your toes about what you did because at least little thing you did. Might cost you your life. It. Right. Here was central to his thinking is live in the south. It was built into him from the very beginning families teach children fear because they want him to survive.

For black families in Mississippi especially sharecropping families fear was the main response to a code of behavior whites imposed call Jim Crow important understand what Jim Crow meant to a child to Richard Wright in the early part of this century. He describes part of it to us and for us that is when whites because they're white. Total power over you right over your head as well that neither means much to them. All right. Richard's parents spent their lives in the Jim Crow. His father was in the literature at a country social in this one room church and school and Natchez Mississippi where she taught part of the children of rural black families attended school only from November through February. So in March cotton could be replanted. And lived in a cabin near the Mississippi River.

He inherited his sensitivity and sensibility from his mother not from his father. You look like his wife probably sounded like him but he was his mother's. Richard the first of two sons was born on a plantation in 1948. And those plantations were all over this particular plantation was 25 miles north of that. I think it was raucous but. Why all of his family is fathers. Yes I had that right. Yes.

My father was a slave. Then in 1940 when Richard was six and half a world away it forced many sharecroppers across the south off the plantations. With the start of World War One the European market for American cotton collapsed triggering a great migration of blacks to large cities. The rights headed from Memphis. Richard was thrilled when he thought he would ride on a jet ski. But it wasn't the city. It was a river sky. Moreover Memphis was grim. Jobs were scarce housing deplorable and disease rapid where black people live. Like many country folks adjusting to a city life was difficult for Richard. Within a year he abandoned the family for a woman he met in the saloon after Dick's father deserted his mother. They were very hungry.

His mother didn't get any kind of what she could and they had nothing to eat sometimes only for the whole day and no food at all sometimes and then she'd come home some days if she were in somebody's home she'd bring a little bit of food. He seemed to be constantly hungry with a terrible noise. Ella reluctantly put her sons in an orphanage so they could eat. Richard ran away twice. BALLIs said get in school. He pleaded. Pennies from neighbors forage for food in the streets and beg drinks in nearby saloon. When Ella unsuccessfully sought money from her husband in court he ridiculed her and Richard's presence. Now desperate she took her boys to a sawmill down in Arkansas. To live with a system man. Her husband Silas. SILAS Hoskins is rather proud of them for black lumber workers. A business so successful whites repeatedly offered to buy a truck to take Hoskins resisted

life quickly became stable for everyone but Richard who couldn't forget the hunger. He began to secretly hide in his clothes. Bread and biscuits and his mother would find these wadded up things and then punish him. ALAIN RICHARD could be a child again. Hoskins treated him like a son. Then one day while Richard waited for his wagon ride Hoskyns failed to come home from work. Why Joe Hoskins said. He said what scared him so much with the way that Hosken just. Vanished like a puff of smoke. This was as close as White had ever come to me in my mind. Real. Why had we not fought back. I asked my mother and the fear that was in her made her slap me into silence. But this didn't stifle his anger. One of his first poems in the world and me.

On the victim of a lynching. One morning while in the woods I stumble suddenly up on that thing I. Stumbled upon a grassy clearing guarded by skating on St. Helens. And the city details of the sea rose thrusting themselves between the world and me. There was a charge stump of a sapling pointing a blunt finger accusingly at the sky. There were torn tree limbs tiny veins of burned leaves and a scorched coil a greasy him. A vacant shoe an empty tie. Ripped shirt a lonely head and a pair of trousers stiff with black blood. On the travel glass but dead matches but ends of cigars and cigarettes peanut shells a drain gin flask a horse lipstick. Scattered traces of tar restless always. A.

Lingering smell of gasoline. And while I stood my mind was frozen with a cold pity for the life that was gone right. In between the world and me. I think is the core. The beginning and the core of looking at. Why. Wrote as did what he deals with. And that poem is how that person experienced this lynching and what he deals with and all of his art. Is how we experience. Racism when he says between the world and me I think all of his life. Dealing with. Racial oppression. Wasn't always. Between. The world. That was his that was his mission. In life. That was his that was his.

That was his goal. Hoskyns death left the family devastated. They all fled Arkansas for Jackson Mississippi. Where Richard Stradley suffered a series of strokes leaving her and Richard would have to face the world over the 12 years he had been abandoned by his father endured severe hunger felt the terror of his uncle's murder. Loss of the ship is so Grandage response to that is that these children must be saved from the center of the world. Her religion has told them and so she instills an even more fever. At least she hopes to do that. A fear which roots which resist. Granny was a strict seventh day adventists well past the age of caring for children much less understanding. She knew Richard to be a child. She would beat her father and. She made him go to church with her on Saturday. She forced him to attend the church school. He wanted to go to public school.

He tormented her as ferociously as she beat him. Eventually she agreed and he began the first four year of school. He'd have. Rights family and. My friends. They're. Just. A little half and we could come out on the porch and signal each other when it was time to. Leave for school. The best the debates was the principals school. That way he would get us into school every morning provided the weather was good but might see the tap of bare. Feet with the tap of the bell and if there was a foot step with that bell he knew it. If you got out of the line and it was. Still. In you you might want to slide into jazz. And we get a kick out of doing it and nobody but Richard.

He found schools are regimented magnets. He sought to skate to his imagination where he dreamed of becoming a writer. His first crude story was written during the siege of classroom boredom. Yet he would tell stories about voodoo when you could imagine sometimes we would draw up. He could tell ghost stories and all like that. He just he could tell one right after the other and he kept his head in those books all the time all the time. He was reading. I wondered how he had eyes. And he was in a personal situation that is his home and family religion was so dominant. Which really offered very little outlet for him. It was an untenable situation. It was ugly. The only way to live was to get out. You had to. It was 15 when he dropped out of school leaving Mississippi two years later from Memphis where he could work. In 1927. Right. Watch this. Worst flood ever in the Mississippi Delta in Memphis.

One day you get this newspaper editorial which was furious with H.L. Mencken perhaps the nation's most provocative journalist. Mencken had called Southern whites. For their action during the flood and the whole region back and said so far as the record show not a single intelligent human is to be found. If they were simply stupid. It would be bad enough. But they are also in large part bellicose and obnoxious. Mankins audacity inspired right. But to read more Mankin meant getting access to the whites only Memphis library. So he lied as he tells us a black boy writing himself a pass to allow entry into the library to get books what's in that world of books Mekin for he became someone for whom language was gibberish. I pictured Minkin as a raging demon slashing with his pen. He was fighting fighting with words using words as a weapon but for

Richard to fight you'd have to go further north. To Chicago. Come my. Way. Maybe. I dream of going north. Right off the north symbolize for me all that I had not felt and see. Back to. A sweet day. He was going out of this out searching for something seeking even to know himself. Of his own identity. I see him everyday. He seemed a mild mannered good looking young who was just that was never the real right. The real right was bottled up inside.

Not long after the 19 year old arrived in Chicago his hopes were almost crushed by the onset of the Great Depression. Days passed by the White Castle. Burgers and go homeless. All. Right swept streets washed dishes. Even started a welfare. Break. A temporary job in the post office. A step toward permanent work and security blocks called the post office the university back in the 30s. Most of us we have lawyers. We have doctors. Many different types of professional men because I wasn't anything out. There. Of course you were. To those of us with a little less weight.

Gain a lot of info in the post office though. Well I have known Richard because I knew some of the people who knew him and many of these people were librarians and they also gave me a description of Richard Wright and told me about how he came to libraries and had respect for them and how they helped them with folks in their lives. He said that he was constantly in the library and he read books like a dog eats meat. Did he met Dan Whitten buried in a library in Chicago. Then they got to talking about books and so forth and so on and Jan who was a member of the Communist Party. Was also part of the gun club which was a front where they recruited people and the John Reid club which of course honored John Reid who was a big hit American hero of the Russian Revolution.

Was a club. Concerned basically with. People in the arts at that time they were nobodies. But everybody was ambitious lot of people like Nelson Norgren Jack Conroy and Studs Terkel any number names like that. It was Jan who suggested that Dick go there and told him that they had publications in silver in town and Dick was very interested in anything where he could write and he did go into the first meeting you went to he found the office rather strange because they had these huge portraits Berani were facing him striding over the world you know the Communist Party posters everywhere. A wonderful beautiful giant. He just felt kind of uncomfortable looking at these great big white workers. On the wall.

Party members welcomed right wing literature to read including the new masses on the left front. They offered to teach him how to write first in college when he had ever had. He quickly gained recognition within party circles for his fiery poems at first then experimental short stories based on his Mississippi past. He joined the party in 1934. There was not a great deal of stigma attached with being a communist and in African-American communities communists were entering a situation where people hadn't had thought they couldn't fight the party organizers unemployment Council. Tenants. The Tea Party organizer Lee for the scope of Negro rights. It is the only major American political party in the history of the country to achieve this level of aggression. This level of focus on the Communist Party gave right of vehicle to discover himself as a writer to discover a community where people would allow him to be

totally outspoken in his criticism of American racism and also out of a place where a black person could be encouraged to develop their literary talents to the fullest. The funny thing about Dick to me later on when I read his stuff you'd never think he was the kind of guy who would write the kind of proceeded. I mean it wasn't none of that bitterness was shown and his personal relationship with people with white people. Well he is a charming fellow. He always seemed in the. Mood and smiling. So I think that they saw the anger on the surface of his advantage and he always knew what was his name. That was a lot of creativity that's on the south side both literature

was being written in a new form of literature that was written by young black writers. There was also the world of jazz on the south side. There was also well Catherine Dutton's a dance troupe at the Abraham Lincoln Center. Jack convoy's and Bill was also published a magazine on the south side and that published the young black writers at that time published her on a board Tom and published Langston Hughes and published Frank Yerby. And of course it also published Richard right. And these writers all appeared to know before they were known nationally and at that magazine. 1936 Wright told Langston Hughes he was organizing a Southside writers group to develop stronger black literature. He suggested that writing by Margaret Walker a young writer to the first meeting is usually I think decent to too well. And I had a complex about those

Southside negroes always dressed up. I was really feeling embarrassed to go. But I decided it was extremely important for me to meet some other writers right to charge of the meeting from the very first. From the minute go we read our work. I would write read big boy leaves home and homes. And my God how that man can write. In big boy leaves home back. Bobo Lester big boy play hooky to sneak a swim and oh man Harvey's part. The White fiance of Harvey sees the boys lying naked in the sunshine. She screams and fear that black bodies as the boys try to cover themselves. Last fall the sound of two rifle shots before a big boy wrestle with guns all the fun killing them.

Fearing that he will be lynched big boy. So. He made for the rail road running straight toward the sunset. It's time to stumble on issues with time and heard his feet. Struck bird. Thirsty. He had no water no. A six foot snake slid out of the pit and went in through. His. Had to kill the snake. Before. His eyes reared. Its teeth. The snake lay still grinding its head into the. Something moving over the hill. Among them was a long dark side.

We saw flames like the hillside. Fanfan. With. Flames. Higher. Job. But. I've never read descriptions of the white race in South Carolina like I mean just withering in terms of who that. Aspect of is you know big boy leaves home where he describes that lynching in mad you know these mad white folks. You know the kind of insanity that's terrifying big

was Wright's first published story. That's more of his poetry articles and short stories were printed his reputation as a talented writer grew well beyond Communist Party circles but this new visibility led to a conflict with the leader of his party so who was very contemptuous of what he called bourgeois intellectuals who were not out organizing. He thought that anybody who a communist should be out in the streets organizing and write felt he was a writer. He wasn't an organizer. He said nothing comes before my God. Is Sacred. I don't care about anything else but what he had to do was the most important. The party officials were jealous of his success. And pressed hard to tell him what the right. Touch is going to have during a Mayday Parade. He didn't party line because the

events of the year was always made may day. Of course was the big parade in those days the party still was a crazy year and the depression and they were able to march down Michigan Avenue and there were weeks before preparing floats and painting banners and. Typical placards that everybody carried. And it was a big event then if you were in the party. It was considered a prime duty to show up for the May Day parade. I knew that right had become disenchanted with Scott. The big blow had come on May Day of 1937. When he declares and tells his story that they threw him out of the parade. I saw him walk out. Nobody threw him out. But they must have said something to him

to evade his feelings so badly that he did walk out of all right remained in the party. The escalating conflicts with local party officials confirmed his need to leave Chicago but that was the reasons he had learned in 10 years. Just about everything he could learn in Chicago about writing and he was ready to publish. And he knew he wasn't going to get published in Chicago the way could get published. You know. Leaving was not simple however. He scored first on a test of the permanent post office job he had sought for years now. Then he said when I leave tonight I will have $40 in my pocket. I hope I'm not making a mistake going like this. How can it be a mistake to go on to your fame and fortune. And he said I thought you would say that. He said You know Margaret I got a notice to go to

work permanently in the post office and I sat in my room and tore up the note I was the hardest decision I've ever had to make. I said Well would you like to be a postman all your life. Because you have said over and over. I want my life to count for something. One. In. New York in 1927 right wasted little time making his life count. Benjamin Davis a communist friend and champion introduced him to Hollams political and literary

worlds and Ben Davis who was himself very well-read person electable felt that there was a tremendous role for somebody like Wright as just a writer. And so he brought right to Harlem to write for the Daily Worker. He had a lot of stories that he kept in his desk drawer the Harlem Bureau of the daily work. I would read them while they party functionaries would not resent it. Right. Coming in from Chicago most of them didn't read anything anywhere except Marxist progress. All. The manuscripts and Wright's desk drawer were of Southern stories developed in Chicago. These were published within a year of his arrival in New York as Uncle Tom's Children featuring Big Boy leaves home. Meanwhile Wright spent his mornings in Brooklyn's Fort Greene Park writing native son when he began to write native son. I was allowed to read and it was a work of

passionate. Discovery. I didn't know whether he always knew where he was going. And I think that's a good sign because you don't just create a novel are created by. After Mary's death disposes of her body in a front to hide his crime. Later during his five man he kills his girlfriend to prevent her from telling. The story stories a bigger claim. But what a fool I am. I didn't know I was really alive in this world until I felt things. In the novel you have tremendous violence the murder of a white

woman the murder of a black woman and you have violence all around at the same time. At the end bigga comes to a realization of his humanity in a sense through this violence because it is not imaginary figures is real. And never is right. Hope. All. Right wasn't frank. He thought bigger was necessary. Because bigger was a response to. Brutality and violence that really did he speak what Richard Wright understood is that you can't participate in that system and not have part of it rub off on you and the violence that was exhibited in Bigger Thomas was merely a reflection. Some would say a pathological one some would say a poignant one of the racism and violence of the largest site by placing a sensational crime story with social criticism. Wright fired the public's imagination with native son over 250000 copies sold within a week. Thousands read it as a book club selection

the first for many thousands more added series because it became a Broadway play directed by Orson Welles. Then the most sought after director in America. The NAACP award it right been gone its highest award and his name was quickly added to Wall of Fame and the New York World's Fair honoring Americans for an Indian or negro origin. Overnight. Richard Wright a self-taught sharecropper's son had become one of the most famous black men in America even Hollywood. Richard Wright is constantly fretting over what Hollywood would do to his films. And of course he knew this from contract at first that one person wanted to make an all white Bigger Thomas native son and so he fantasised one time.

Imagine he says Bigger Thomas walking down the steps singing Surrey with the fringe on top. But when the claim came criticism. Swiped so harsh that Wright had running battles with a few critics as well as with communists who were shocked that writer portrayed the party so negative people who didn't agree with him and wanted them to toe their line. It's understandable that they would be resisted because he was a powerful writer and he was reaching many many people that wasn't paying attention to their point of view bigger. Thomas was not a person amenable to any political movement and essentially right was saying that there was within the Northern urban centres a type of African-American person who no political movement could speak to. And that was a very difficult message for communists to take. As a result it created a crisis in party circles what to do about this. This

is not only the most prominent black intellectual in communist circles. This is the preeminent black novelist in the United States. He still is speaking out in behalf of party positions in foreign policy the cry of the common people throughout the day is Soviet Union readers then live in the morning down through the wall and reside in the heart of the common people of the world. Here is a nation. And. We're one nation. The very fact that it's common people dead bad boy excommunicating him would have been a terrible blow to the party's prestige. Right success make him one of the most eligible men in party circles. After a brief failed

marriage to a Russian ballerina he married Ellen Popple a white party organizer in 1941. Our daughter Julia was born a year later just as America mobilized for World War II. It's also part of his family. Right couldn't be drafted but he offered to write for the Army office of War Information. There was reject. Officials prefer writers without his political notoriety. Then the war effort the FBI charged with internal security decided to investigate right for sedition. Never before was a greater need for unity all the forces would work against the. Rabble rousing and seemingly innocent ones. And last but by no means least those pseudo liberals. Wright was a target because his work attacked racism. The FBI singled out 12 million black boys it's just passionate chronicle of the bleakness of black life written in

1941. To write his text was true. The FBI said it was treasonous and so began a steady drumbeat of harassment and surveillance. Dick knew from early that he was under surveillance and possibly his home was being bugged door in other ways that they follow the army the CIA and the FBI and the Communist Party. They never wanted to let him go. And they really wanted to shut him up but he never gave them the chance. He quit. He felt the party which had meant so much to him had abandoned black people. The last straw was the party's refusal to support a civil rights march on Washington and he talks about one element being his inability to persuade his black comrades that something terrible and horrible is happening inside the party which is beginning to show signs of being and the party of

expedience rather than a party of principle. He had thought long and hard about the problems of race. A black person in America of racism and Jim Crow prejudice what logs them gave him what he believed would be the answer to the problem. And that is the reason we really went into the Communist Party. He left it when he discovered they didn't have this to lose. During the 1940s Wright traveled extensively speaking out against racism wherever he went. Even in the south. And to his surprise audiences were touched by his childhood memories. This convinced him to write his autobiography would be called black boy. Well he was a storyteller. He wrote these stories but he lived these stories and he would tell them as if they were in a book. But he and very easily he remembered everything he added. Absolutely phenomenal memory. He also told me that black boy

was in part an imaginative biography. One went to morning in the long ago four year old days of my life. I found myself standing before a fireplace warming my hands over him out the cold. All morning my mother had been scolding me. Telling me to keep still wanting to me that I must make no noise. And I was angry fretful and impatient. In the next room granny late in the day and I care a doctor. And I knew that I would be punished if I did not obey. The room held nothing of interest except the fire. Now. I was wondering just how the long fluffy white curtain would look if I live a bunch of straws and held it under them. What I tried. Sure I pulled several straws from the. And help them to the fire to the blaze. I rushed to the window and brought the plane touch with the hands of the current. Red circles were eating into

the white cloth and a flare of flames shot out. A sheet of yellow lit the room. What half of the room was now blaze. I was terrified. So my mother would smell that smoke and see the fire come and beat me. After being pulled from his hiding place under the house. She did so severely he said that he lost consciousness. This is how he begins black boy. White boy sort to number one on the bestseller list in April 1945. Aided by intense media coverage including a life magazine photo spread. It also stirred up more controversy for right Senator Bilboa from his home state Mississippi denounced the former senator as dirty filthy as lousy as most obscene piece of writing he'd ever seen. But William Faulkner of Mississippi praised Wright for saying what had to be said. How I got out how I escaped slavery. You know what slavery

was like how terrible it was and how I got away from it. That's essentially what it is. And I think that's why the for black people. The autobiographical form is so useful. Because you can say like I said you will abolish it you know my life is a witness. I'm not making this up my life is a witness. What Richard Wright was about being a human being not black first not a man for being a human being. He said the reason I write about race so much is to make us get beyond the necessity of writing about race. Richard Wright had one hell of a memory and he drew on that memory. He was a very realistic vivid writer. But his sense of memory is a

sense of rage. Are. Very much a part of his literature. He really spent. 19 years in the south before he went out of the south and there is no question but that his imagination was completely formed that. This city is more complicated and tragic state. It has. Passed. That all right. Mass trauma and a lot of people like me tend to forget that at the core Richard Wright was. And I think. Back.

To Greenwich elites when Dick was living there were supposed to be the most liberal section of New York. Right. The first African-American writer to earn a living solely from writing could afford to invest in a village home for his family. But when he bought his townhouse at 13 Charles Street in 1945 white residents were furious to discover who their new neighbor was. Even on Charles Street this great area neighbors sitting outside on the stoop or something would call him nigger when he would go in his own house and then he was afraid that Julian would be harmed. And it was he adored his child. It was a terrible concern to him. He no not.

But there were other more pressing worries for right the. The government had stepped up its campaign against suspected subversives a cold war between East and West Africa. And Communists were now seen as a threat. One of the first communists to go before the House Un-American Activities Committee was writes from Paul Robeson the Justice Department would like to indict and imprison members of the National Board of the Communist Party which included another friend Ben Davis. Many others were under intense scrutiny because they were without hesitation. Maintaining that black people should have civic civil equality and without that there should be no America. So Robson right. Dubois this became an acceptable choice. The FBI which knew he had denounced the party as right to inform on his friends. He refused what had been harassment and surveillance now included the

potential loss of freedom. Moreover. Racial violence was increasing across the nation. So with a mounting sense of urgency he decided to leave the country. What happened was he made a trip to France and was so well received that he decided to shock the United States and move over to the Rights Movement to France is in part. A way of his right. The right the right to think and to communicate. But he's also of course moving on to a larger Dick had told me just a day or two before that he was going to Paris not only for his story but he was going to bring this country back to the world and try to make the world realize what was happening. My wife and I were there at the docks for a big party champagne party and so on. He knew

by the wide body of people the intellectuals and people in society. They went all over. And that was. That. You. Speak about you. As you. Go. So you got to do that. And he said this is this huge weight off my shoulders. He said my legs swung free which was a marvelous expression because he didn't have the weight of the hostility to him that said to me or anybody else. And he moved into a society where he was lying

he was one of the big literary figures in France and it must've been a thoroughly enjoyable. Feel like. He did some work but during the first months in which he yet he simply enjoyed being a writer and that. He just enjoyed the beauty of Paris. And one of the most beautiful places was the Luxembourg Gardens. He left the palace. We didn't walk up to the pass through scene. We would go across the flats to go beyond and we'd come up the steps here. And. We had a favorite statue. My mother used to sit there and my father when he came and we used to play around that stack. He was writing and working. He was at home in the morning. But.

The thing about it was that he was always around. See what we liked about Paris was the openness of it and he liked the cafes because they sprawled out on the sidewalks. Not just like all the other folks had a place called The War Room. And Richard would always be there and that was the spot where all the writers would pass because it was the place to go. We didn't know who they were and they put their trunks down without them even asking. Then they would get together and get on to us. Now this was the fun because we're on the subject of mathematics could be religion it could be romance it could be politics many times right. Tractor cafe trombone was also an excuse to browse his favorite bookstore. He loved it. He would wander in the bookstore. And pick out books to take home to read. He had built up quite a library. By the way. He came here like

buttonholed. What they thought of by mankind during one of these discussions right. Seduced into a costly and time consuming earth. The French director are now convinced that a movie the sun might be a profitable venture. Right. He wrote in the script was co-producer. He even signed a small fortune of his own money into the production Canada Lee who played big Thomas on Broadway will soon leave Canada. Lee was a well-known actor and his career was beginning to bloom so much that he was simply unavailable. Well one should also establish a sheet outside of Hollywood that leaves out a significant body of other actors so that. Gradually. The idea came to right to boot that he would be truly bigger towns Max.

OK but I hope what happened to me won't happen to another. He's overweight. He's over age. He wears a baseball cap pulled down tightly on his head as though he were a Chicago Cub instead of a street kid. Nothing works. Typical right. He tried something new for the film. And this dream sequence that's not in the book right. I was on a pile of coal. I was trying to hide a lot so nobody would ever find. Them. All is fine. All right. I was walking in a big all around me and everything was right. It was a good place to hide. I was back on the farm where I used to live when I was a boy. I wasn't scared. I was back home again

and that was my white folks. When I was a kid I ran to him and I was so happy I was crying. I knew that nothing bad was ever going to happen to me anymore. All at once I felt that it wasn't MY who was holding my. Breath. Was laughing at me. Now. The film is a. Right lost most of his investment and his portrayal of bigger Thomas was around late and. The reaction to native son the movie suggested that Wright's brand of protest had gone out of fashion. But this only made him bolder when asked to write for the mainstream negro magazine Ebony. His article The shame of Chicago was classic right.

It charged that living conditions in Chicago's black ghetto had not changed in over 20 years and based on that he is right if you would write us another article that is roughen Why don't you write about Paris. What could he say about Paris that could be bad. How Blacks would live in Paris. And he titled it I chose exile and the minute Johnson read the thing he says we're never going to run an article it's impossible. In the other article he was just blasting Chicago. Now he is criticizing the whole country. You said one part of the article he says are more freedom in one block. Of Paris is the United States. Anyway he thought this was going to be considered subversive un-American etc.. He refused to print Ebony's timidity dismayed him. He tried to get the article printed elsewhere but failed. The climate of fear he had seen coming when he left America had taken home again. He asked that question every week.

Are you a member of the Communist Party or have you ever been a member of a party if unfortunate and tragic that I hope this committee is advancing. I think there's a distinct possibility that Wright would have been paraded before congressional committees and asked to inform on all the individuals who were in the various Communist Party organizations that he had been in the way Paul Robeson was what was done to Paul Robeson in United States could have been done to write if he wasn't willing to try and and I suspect would have which is one reason he never came back here he didn't want to expose himself. Paul Robeson stripped of his passport and nearly ruined financially other friends artists like like some was summoned and bullied by Congress. Wright realized he might never see America again. Second daughter Rachel was

born in France in 1949 reconciles the living as an exile. He had to get his career back on track. So he finished a novel whose theme he'd lived all his life. It was titled The outsider. He was always growing and developing and learning and reading writing was really trying to look at a different kind of person perhaps more like himself. That got him to thinking of a new kind of fictional creation. And so crossbeam and represent that new individual unlike writes earlier books from the outside it was published in 1953. Sales were slow. Many American critics called right across daimon overly intellectual. He felt that was giving the best of himself that he'd grown. That he was more mature that his work was more universal just the time when he was only when he was growing when he had become a man rather than a boy. They were calling him

you know you'll remain a boy. We want you that way. To my black expatriates and powers were right. People who refuse to be broke a. Black it represented some kind of a danger. Any black man who want to live in a country other than the United States was making a statement and that was that the United States was not the best place in the world. This was something which was forbidden to think of. He also received many letters from mostly young black writers. Who were inspired by his coming to Europe. And wanted to follow in his footsteps. And of course he had the chance to this area. There. Was also Chester Himes and we.

Have left the United States because of racism. I found out that I could really no longer work there. I felt violence mounting against me and I was really fearful that I might wind up by killing someone. For us black people there's much less racism here than in America. That's right. Was also used by the French. He was so used by the French as an example the French the French have an open mind French Open mindedness and lack of racism. I would not like a nigger. Because negro Negro at that. Right understood that. But he also knew that intellectuals enjoyed a measure of political tolerance in France. He thrived on the radical ideas and political beliefs. Wright is an activist not merely a novelist not merely an essay is not merely a social critique. There is. A

sense that Wright has become his instrument his own gender. He's conscious of what he must do. He's an intellectual on the move. The Swedish public came to know you in your first book Native Son and black boy. Do you think that these problems would change the nature of the problems have changed but the problems remain and you are still dealing with these problems in your book. Yes I am but I have you might say that my concern with this problem is no longer exclusively the Negro problem in the United States but also the what you'd call the color question as a whole in the world in Asia Africa and the Negroes in the Caribbean area. The color question right referred to was the issue of independence for African and Asian countries from European control. This was a growing political matter during the 1950s. Paris at that time had become a center of really the

African liberation. Every leader in that movement came to dig the famous American black writer to seek advice to seek the feeling of community. There was a certain amount of ego and also fame rubs off on people convinces them that perhaps they are the spokesman for black people no matter where they come from. I think this is developing. Where. The gold coast is the first African colonial nation slated for freedom. Its prime minister invited right to report on his nation's transition into independent got. One of the most exciting moments which you write was the onset or the advent and the time. And he went you know to going to be a part of this

emerging Black Power wrote a book called Black Power and Ghana was sort of an African dream. This century is Africa. This decade is the decade of African independence. Day. Independence. To. Independence. Tomorrow. The United States of Africa. I mean. Black power right off it. In my own analysis of the issues he's facing an independent got the. Right subscription. However we can buy one crucial flaw. He was not prepared for the cultural differences he encountered in Africa.

In a sense he was immensely. Uncomfortable with what he saw and. And I think that this comfort could be attributed to his personality lack of fit. He's an outsider. He believes he's an insider who should be trusted when he's when he's not trusted by the people in Ghana. And that's a substantial disappointment. And he went there out of curiosity to see whether he had any roots there. So many people believe they have and he felt that he felt that people were rather backward. And then he was attack me call him but he hated that. Some people felt that he had betrayed me. Final thought to him and he realized he is an American. This next report become a current account of the first conference of free Asian and African countries held in Bandung Indonesia encountered the same kind of dismissive criticism

that greeted black. For sales and hostile reviews also mocked the publication of rights of a nonfiction book in Spain. A psychological analysis of Spanish culture and white man listen. To one of his most scathing lectures on Western racism and the third world. Wright said he was probably the last independently minded negro alive and he would pay for it. Richard Wright in the late 1950s goes beyond bounds of the. State Department. The CIA. And there are British French equivalents. So right is very clear that is a tax on American foreign policy. Just attacks by name on the Central Intelligence Agency. And of course he obviously is willing to take the risk. Of it like annoying contradictions while he spoke out for justice elsewhere in the world. There was an issue close to home on which he had to silent.

A mass protest against the proposed by my government is what the French made public. Not. Only. Did these Algerians were in open rebellion against French colonial occupation. He was living in France. It's a very bloody war. Hundreds of Algerians and other North Africans were killed in this country during that struggle. And it poses serious problems for the African black people suddenly become aware of a difference in the French attitude towards them. This was very difficult for people like Richard who were of course

guests of the French state and he was a man who was known to take sides. We were interested in the rebellion in Algeria that we were sympathetic to the Algerians but we mention that one of the rules for an outsider an expatriate living in Paris is he not indulge in any kind of culture you don't last very long in France that we were deported to many Americans. Why. Has. The. It was really good. Yeah I see more like the U.S. Army which had a rather large established on either intelligence service or the French police have a service which is called general information and they

keep files on everybody being the complex man that he was was also rather paranoid. Friends stick always had a pretty Manesh. That. The plot was being. Fixed up again. The. Purpose of. Getting rid of it. Of course we didn't take. He told us that his place was what. We left out. But we found French electronics man who went with us to fight in one when they found that it was covered in several ways. Tensions and disappointments and terrorists made it difficult to work in the city. So he spent weeks on end now at his farm in the Normandy countryside. Retreat. He purchased a few years earlier with royalties from his U.S. works income. Now.

This was the potato patch over there that was very important to him. And when the potatoes were ready he would go back to Paris with them and he'd go to the top and park his car and he'd tell the brothers that the harvest was ready and whether they wanted it or not. They'd follow him to the car and they'd get their potatoes. Some of them didn't know what to do with them. That was the way it was. And this was his office. And I think it was no coincidence that he had his table just in front of the window so that when he was typing he could look over his work in the garden. This is where he wrote the long dream and the long dream. Right. Return to fiction. He had. The nonfiction book confirming his intellectual growth not so. He labored on the long dream story of race and violence in Mississippi for nearly two

years amid mounting difficulties. And a sudden debilitating. He had caught the bus. There is some vagueness about where he caught them whether it was back in 2002 in 1955 or in Africa before that 1953. And he has been under treatment for amoebas. Now that is a very heavy going treatment. It was a worried man. I didn't realize it until later but he had great financial lives of. His family to London for a while. But right wasn't allowed to join us from. The British government refused him a visa. There was nothing to do with. These things the press and I think one could say that he was a very depressed.

Period right. Believe us influence forced the British to refuse him a residency to be. Separated now from his wife. He lived alone in a two room Parisian flat a place too small to work so he frequently left Paris for long stretches to an artist retreat. The longed. Day. He wrote poetry. Japanese. Haiku is a precise full. Three lines of five of them. And five syllables a total of seven. Writes haiku states of mind. And the season. He wrote for. I. Have nobody. Read sinking out son not my name. I like that song and I always use that form because you can say so much.

In the same way that the Japanese would say because it's so short and I mean and that's what I learned from. Right because the haiku just scoops up. It is September the month when I was born and I have no thoughts. I think he was very depressed about the articles he was reading a critic saying that his powers his literary powers were declining. That he'd written everything he had to write before he left the states rights. Why the works have been denigrating the idea about them. The most common idea is that when writing left this country never to return. He lost touch with his black roots right was never let us not forget that the long dream.

The last novel published in my lifetime. Two years before he died so in NOCHES. It the long dream. Write up the story material once again that's shocking and provocative. Mr. Semmes. I'm afraid you won't know your son. Now. You sure you want to see this. Yeah. I want him to see what happens after a lynching got Shirey Naches mortician prepares some fish belly to survive in a world where there was still violence against blacks in mid fifties America. God. Yes.

So. Why. Should. I go away. I. Do. Not wish to God you old enough to help me with this bomb sir. But you don't need this stuff yet. You know what I do to make my living. I make money getting black dreams ready for burial. Maybe you don't know what I mean. The black man has a dream and a dream that can't come true. Your dream fish. But be careful what you dream. Dream

only what can happen. Fish. The main thing for a black man is to live and not end up like Chris. Most folks like that be accident. But for us comes too damn often to be called an accident. When it happens every day no accident. No most of law. Or law or life. Into law is your main business. Critics of the long gray said rights portrayal of Tiree as an Uncle Tom was passe for the 1950s right to disagree. Who the junkie Puchi the Keystone Pipeline a presumptive percentage come tottery. Terina police said time. Deviant shows differ on me. Not in

Dipali. See if you get told the truth about the source of truth cannot be told without dealing with those things that have been so damaging to human psyches. That's what much of just trying to get a message out about and part of this message is that the only the strong will survive amid unfavorable reviews of the long dream. I got a telegram that his mother had supported for 30 years had suffered a severe setback. The savings now depleted. He had to borrow $100 to center for Frankau broke record album liner notes. But some musicians objected to write the ex-communists the work suddenly evaporate. Work stopped also on a new manuscript of Father's law due to his erratic health. In November 1960 he needed more medical tests whenever he went to the American Hospital for a check for go to the American Hospital he'd be out in a few days. He said I do that because if

they couldn't do anything to me it would be in the American Hospital which was perfectly. True to certain friends of his and says. Petty harassment is nasty and if. I'm cool. My friends know the direction from which. The threat has come. The day came they did not notify me that he was going for a check up and we found out later that he had gone to a little obscure French clinic and another US where he died. So I went immediately to that clinic. I was shown down in what they call it which means Sellar long.

There lay dick right was really the most terrible experience of. The suddenness of which bright step triggered rumors that there had been foul play. The absence of an autopsy and the fact that his most recent medical tests were negative fueled the speculation which continues even until today. But these rumors never been verified. Right. Rescreen that cemetery. He would rest in good company. Among artists like Oscar Wilde Gertrude Stein. Marcel Proust. And Edith Piaf. He was right who was one of the people. Who made a purchase of the neatest. I mean the later man and we would all we would still in a sense of him

not. Describing it like you know white supremacy and the fascist nature of the society's relationship the whole existence of black people as an oppressed nation. That's priceless. And that's what all our tradition is a tradition of struggle. I think it is one of the few black writers. Writing show Sex militancy. And such intellectual honesty. That marks a line of demarcation. Between all those that came before him and all those came out. I would think that white stands as a model for all young white. Or whatever because the magnificence of this man is that he was born gifted. He did not have a great formal education he had no Ph.D. anywhere in the world.

So many of us would help. And I think that's very important for someone to know that writing comes on God. It comes out of the experience as it comes out of knowing how as White said to use the words as weapons. Richard Wright's ashes rest in the mausoleum. Elisha. To the right of the crematory some slavery. And. Stay. On. 9

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9. Major funding for this program was provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Additional funding was provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The Ford Foundation the Foundation for Public Broadcasting in Mississippi the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Black Programming Consortium to purchase a video cassette of this program for

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