BIOGRAPHY OF RICHARD WRIGHT

Early life

Wright, the grandson of former slaves, was born on the Rucker plantation in Roxie, Mississippi, in Franklin County, just outside of Natchez.
His family soon moved to Memphis, Tennessee. While in Memphis, his father Nathaniel, a former sharecropper, abandoned the family because of a hard time finding a job. His mother, a schoolteacher, had to support herself and her children. In 1914 Ella Wright became ill, and the two brothers were sent to Settlement House, a Methodist orphanage. The mother then moved with her children to Jackson, Mississippi, to live with relatives. In Jackson, Wright grew up and attended public high school. In 1916, Wright, his brother, and their mother returned to Mississippi, moving in with Margaret Wilson, Wright’s grandmother.
Later, the family moved in with Wright’s aunt and uncle in Elaine, Arkansas, but left after whites murdered Wright’s uncle Silas Hoskins in 1916. The family fled to West Helena, Arkansas, where they lived in fear in rented rooms for several weeks.[1] Mrs. Wright took the boys to Jackson, Mississippi, for several months in 1917, but they returned to West Helena by the winter of 1918. Further family disintegration occurred after Mrs. Wright suffered a stroke in 1919. Wright reluctantly chose to live with Uncle Clark and Aunt Jody in Greenwood, Mississippi, where he could be near his mother, but restrictions placed on him by his aunt and uncle made him an emotional wreck. On the verge of a nervous breakdown, he was permitted to return to Jackson, where he lived with Grandmother Wilson from early 1920 until late 1925. Wright felt stifled by his aunt and his maternal grandmother, who tried to force him to pray that he might find God. He later threatened to leave home because Grandmother Wilson refused to permit him to work on Saturdays, the Adventist Sabbath. Early strife with his aunt and grandmother left him with a permanent, uncompromising hostility toward religious solutions