In 1908, Wright was born on Rucker's Plantation in rural southern Mississippi. The climate of hate aganist Negroes was blatantly cruel. The ugliness and pain would come out in the works of Wright.

Wright's father failed as a farmer, moved the family to Memphis, and then disappeared. Left to support the family, Wright's mother struggled and finally suffered a stroke that left her paralyzed. Richard ended up in Chicago, where he got a job at the Post Office. He was so undernourished that he failed the physical exam, but he regained his health was able to go to work. Still poor, he had already started to write.

In 1940, he completed "Native Son" and began to get national attention. Wright found racism in America to be so oppressive that he became an expatriate in France. He wanted to be a man without labels, and racism was something that tore at his very being.