Richard Wright #1706

Caption from poster__      Richard Wright   African American writer and poet Richard Wright was the son of a sharecropper and went to school only through the ninth grade, but published his first short story at the age of 16. His autobiography, Black Boy, was publishedin 1945. The writer and poet born Richard Nathaniel Wright near Natchez, Mississippi was the grandson of slavesand the son of a sharecropper. He went to school in Jackson, Mississippi while working at various jobs in the South.In 1927 he went to Chicago and worked briefly in the post office, but forced on relief by the Depression, he joined the Communist Party (1932). With two more minor works published, he found employment with the Federal Writers Project, and his Uncle Tom's Children (1938), a collection of four stories, was highly acclaimed. In 1937 he moved to New York City, where he was an editor on the communist newspaper, Daily Worker, but the publication of Native Son (1940) brought him overnight fame and the