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RICHARD WRIGHT: BLACK BOY
A Teacher's Guide for Secondary and Post Secondary Educators
by Jerry M. Ward
INTRODUCTION
Although RICHARD WRIGHT: BLACK BOY focuses mainly on the life and history
of an internationally acclaimed American author, the visual and audio components
of the documentary richly contextualize the literature that Wright produced.
In that sense, the documentary synthesizes a great amount of historical, social
and cultural information about the twentieth century. It can be used to prompt
extensive discussions, to stimulate students to undertake special research projects,
to write papers or combine the arts and/or cultural knowledge into a learning
experience.
Since the documentary is ninety minutes in length, planning and scheduling
viewing time for students is essential so that the documentary can be viewed
in either one or two class periods.
Teachers are encouraged to view and discuss the documentary together and decide
whether it is more efficient to use it in teaching one discipline or if students
might profit more from discussions that are not discipline bound.
The Teacher's Guide is designed for those teachers who want to use RICHARD
WRIGHT: BLACK BOY to enhance the experiences of their students as they explore
many and various school subjects.
The guide is not designed to be exhaustive. It provides ideas for student activities
and assignments, bibliographies of Wright's work, and a selected listing of
background sources. Some older materials are included to suggest the state of
scholarship and thinking about issues within Wright's lifetime or as reminders
of what works might have influenced his thinking. In making assignments, it
is suggested that the teacher add current articles and books that are deemed
appropriate.
The pre-viewing questions and activities are designed to help students gain
background knowledge. The post-viewing student assignments focus on ways Wright's
works mentioned in the documentary can be used to promote broader inquiries
among the disciplines. Because the documentary contains scenes that portray
Negro lynchings and an African woman's bare breasts, it is recommended that
teachers and administrators below the college level review the program before
showing it to students.
Questions and activities are provided in the following disciplines: History,
Education, Psychology, Literature, Sociology, and Political Science/Cultural
Studies. The bibliography completes the guide. Teachers are encouraged to adapt
the suggested questions and activities to the appropriate grade level and developmental
level of their students.
RICHARD WRIGHT: AN OVERVIEW
Richard Nathaniel Wright, the son of an illiterate sharecropper father and
a school teacher mother, was born on September 4, 1908, on a Mississippi plantation
some twenty miles from Natchez, in the community of Roxie. His parentage is
emblematic: his father may be seen as the soil, the concrete in life; his mother
as the world of ideas, the abstractions that shape our sense of reality. The
trajectory of Wright's life from his birth in Mississippi to his death in Paris
on November 28, l960, at 52 years of age, marks a long and unfinished quest
for the liberation of the mind and the human spirit.
What seems to have driven Wright's quest might be described as the multiple
dimensions of hunger. During his boyhood, Wright's hunger was often physical
due to his father's desertion of the family when Wright was only seven years
old. In fact, the absence of food and of his father became interchangeable in
the boy's mind. When, as a man of thirty-seven, Wright reflected on his black
childhood and youth in the Deep South, he exposed his pain in words that are
haunting: "As the days slid past the image of my father became associated
with my pangs of hunger, and whenever I felt hunger I thought of him with a
deep biological bitterness." The bitterness, however, is not only directed
against his biological father but also against a whole society that provided
grounds for hunger. The painful knowledge that in the South of the early twentieth
century, the ceiling of a brilliant BLACK BOY's possibilities was indeed low,
thus creating a vast need for fulfillment in Wright's young life. Wright's hunger
to develop as a whole human being was social, psychological, and spiritual.
This hunger to be, to know, and to understand was pervasive, formative, and
motivating throughout his lifetime.
Wright's hunger could not be satisfied by the success of Uncle Tom's Children
(1938), the fame that came with the publication of Native Son (1940),
or Black Boy (1945). These books made Wright a spokesperson for an entire
generation of Black Americans.
Wright could write passionately and eloquently about the meaning of suffering
in the lives of oppressed and exploited people because that suffering was an
integral part of his own life. Wright's material success only seemed to intensify
his awareness that hunger of the spirit is implacable. The Communist Party had
been the only one to take a deep interest in Richard Wright's life and had at
one time offered to teach him to write.
As one views RICHARD WRIGHT: BLACK BOY, one should be very attentive to what
is revealed about Wright's sustained interest in language and in the affairs
of the world. Wright was an especially keen observer and recorder of the human
condition in the twentieth century, and his mode of engaging issues and ideas
was that of the participant-observer.
In the books that followed Black Boy, Wright expresses his deep interest
in the large questions of authority, power, and freedom. Like Cross Damon, the
hero of The Outsider (1953), Wright himself had existential longings.
If one understands this novel as one segment of Wright's intellectual autobiography,
it is easier to understand why and how he situated himself in non-fiction works
and why he was so fascinated by modern psychology in Lawd Today, Savage Holiday,
and The Long Dream. Whether Wright was analyzing the independence movement
and African culture in Black Power (1954), reporting on a conference
at which Asian and African nations debated what should be their future in the
global order in The Color Curtain (1956), or examining the political
and religious intricacies of Catholic culture in Pagan Spain (1957),
Wright was always the engaged writer, the brother in suffering. It is the ethos
of Wright's voice, his ability to be both victim and asserter, that insures
his authority and is the most enduring quality of his literary legacy.
QUESTIONS AND ACTIVITIES BEFORE VIEWING
- Richard Wright was born in 1908, and died in 1960. What significant developments
or major changes occurred in the sciences, American government, economics,
politics, literature, technology, and the arts between these dates?
- What amendments were added to the United States Constitution during the
period 1908 to 1960?
- What major changes occurred in race relations between l908 and 1960? Especially
address those that occurred in 1954 and later.
- Interview people who were born in the 1920's and 1930's. If available, use
the Internet for interviews. How do the interviewees remember and describe
social and cultural changes prior to 1960?
- Interview family members or others, born before 1960, who have lived in
Mississippi, Chicago, New York, Paris, or West Africa. Inquire about the problems
that were of special importance to them. Do any remember the Great Depression?
- What did the term "Jim Crow" mean in the South?
- What economic and social conditions may have encouraged large numbers of
blacks from the South to migrate to urban areas in the northern and western
parts of the U.S. in the early twentieth century? Did this migration have
an impact on the South as a region?
- What was the impact of World War I on the Southern economy? Was the impact
of World War II radically different?
- Discuss or write a report on the Harlem Renaissance. Who were some of the
major writers and artists during this period? How does the Harlem Renaissance
differ from what has been called the Jazz Age? Were basic American values
modified by changes in music, dress, and entertainment during the period of
the Harlem Renaissance?
- What are the major differences between plantations before the Civil War
and those that still existed in the twentieth century?
- What is sharecropping? Is the analogy between economic slavery and sharecropping
a fair one? Why?
- Who was H.L.Mencken? Why did many Southerners dislike him?
- Define the following terms: socialism, fascism, capitalism, democracy, colonialism,
marxism, communism. What philosophical and political beliefs are embedded
in each of these terms? Discuss how one might become disillusioned with each
of the above philosophies and/or political belief systems.
- Who was Karl Marx? Identify several of his major works. Why did his theories
about social organization and the relation between labor and capital have
international appeal in the twentieth century?
- In what areas of American life did Communism have the strongest influence
between the end of World War I and the beginning of World War II? What was
the reaction of the U.S. to the 1918 Bolshevik Revolution?
- What does the term "alienation" mean? How is it used in psychology?
How is it used in discussions of political behaviors?
- What is the image of African-American culture today and how has it changed
over the last fifty years? What seems not to have changed?
- Define the word "ghetto." What is the historical meaning of the
term? Do we use it appropriately today in discussions of urban life?
- What is the image of African-American culture today and how has it changed
over the last fifty years? What seems not to have changed?
QUESTIONS AND ACTIVITIES AFTER VIEWING
- Richard Wright was born in 1908, and Eudora Welty was born in 1909. Both
spent their formative years in Jackson, Mississippi. Compare Wright's depiction
of his childhood in Black Boy with Welty's reflections in One Writer's
Beginnings. What images of a Southern urban community emerge from the
two readings? Create a drawing, painting or three dimensional representation
of your image.
- After reading Black Boy, write your own autobiography. In what ways
are the dominant images in Wright's autobiography similar or dissimilar to
those in your own?
- Identify the following people who are mentioned in the documentary: Langston
Hughes, Benjamin Davis, J.Edgar Hoover, James Baldwin, Paul Robeson, W.E.B.
DuBois, Orson Welles, Margaret Walker Alexander, Joyce Ann Joyce, William
Faulkner, John Reed, Jack Conroy, Studs Terkel, Arna Bontemps, Kwame Nkrumah,
Katherine Dunham, Frank Yerby.
- What impressed you the most about the documentary? Write a poem, story,
or narrative about what had the greatest impact on you. Illustrate your work.
- Read some of Wright's short fictional works. Write a one act play based
on one of these stories or dramatize a section of Native Son.
- Do you think that growing up in the South during Richard Wright's time was
better or worse than today? Give some reasons for your opinion.
- Have you visited any of the places mentioned in the program? Contrast what
you saw when you visited and what you saw on the program.
- What reasons can you give for Wright joining the Communist Party and what
reasons can you give for Wright leaving the Party and moving to Paris?
- Assemble a collection of newspaper clippings and magazine articles about
changes that are occurring on the African continent. Discuss these stories
in relation to the segment of the film that deals with Wright's visit to Africa.
- Write a paper on crime and violence from a teenager's perspective. Compare
your ideas with the stories of adolescent crime and violence in Native
Son and Rite of Passage.
- Watch broadcasts of trials on TV and read the trial section of Native
Son. Report to your class on the difference between contemporary court
procedures and those represented in Wright's novel.
- Write a brief paper on American writers who have chosen to live in foreign
countries. How were their choices similar or different from those Richard
Wright made in choosing exile?
- If you have access to the Internet, contact students in several of the
countries that Richard Wright visited. Ask them how familiar they are with
Wright's works or the places mentioned in the documentary.
HISTORY: QUESTIONS AND ACTIVITIES
Native Son, Black Boy, 12 Million Black Voices, The Long Dream, Uncle Tom's
Children, Black Power, The Outsider, and White Man Listen! are Richard
Wright's works that are releavent in the study of history.
- Wright subtitled 12 Million Black Voices, "A Folk History of
the Negro in the United States." What is a folk history? What are the
implications for how we came to understand history if Wright's book is considered
a valid example?
- In what way might Wright's Black Power, which does not pretend to
be history, challenge and supplement official histories of the Gold Coast
(Ghana)?
- Discuss what uses a historian might make of RICHARD WRIGHT: BLACK BOY. Compile
a short bibliography of reference works that would help a historian probe
more deeply into the events that can only be sketched in the documentary.
- Write a brief research report on American Communism from 1920 to 1945. How
was the growth of the Communist Party in the United States made easier by
the mood of the country during the Great Depression years? How active were
Communists in the labor movement or in efforts to achieve racial justice?
- Read The Long Dream and examine to what extent it could be used for
understanding southern history just prior to the beginning of the Civil Rights
Movement. What caution must be observed in using fiction to understand history?
Debate the validity of using fiction by such southern writers as William Faulkner,
Ellen Douglas, Eudora Welty, and Shelby Foote to gain new perspectives on
history.
EDUCATION: QUESTIONS AND ACTIVITIES
Richard Wright's works that may be used in educational studies: Native Son,
12 Million Black Voices, BLACK BOY, The Long Dream, Rite of Passage, The Outsider,
Black Power, Pagan Spain, The Color Curtain, and White Man, Listen!
- Discuss the result of the lack of educational opportunities for black Southerners
as these are reflected in Uncle Tom's Children and in Wright's autobiography
Black Boy. Do these results still influence in some way African-American
attitudes about public education in the South? Explain.
- In 12 Million Black Voices (1941), Wright noted that even if black
schools "were open for the full term our children would not have the
time to go." To what peculiar feature of black education in the rural
South of the early twentieth century was Wright referring? What forces led
to the eradication of this peculiar feature?
- Read Wright's essay "The Ethics of Living Jim Crow" in Uncle
Tom's Children. Discuss how the nature of Wright's education and social
norms might illustrate the tension that still exists between the ideals of
classroom education and what students actually learn in the world beyond the
school.
- How does Wright describe political education in Pagan Spain?
- Examine Wright's depiction of adolescents and anti-social behavior in Rite
of Passage. Does this book provide a frame of reference for a discussion
of the reasons for high dropout rates in many contemporary school systems?
- Use Black Power and The Color Curtain as focal points for
a forum on education in former colonies in Africa. Involve African students
and students from so-called Third World countries who are attending schools
in the United States. Have we freed ourselves from the biases implicit in
Wright's commentaries?
- Consider that Black Power, Pagan Spain, White Man, Listen!, and The
Color Curtain were not received favorably by critics or the reading public.
If hostile reviews were based on the claim that Wright lacked the insights
and authority to make pronouncements about foreign cultures, what kinds of
special training might be most helpful for those who might eventually teach
in foreign countries? Can Wright's books help us to identify danger points
in the assumptions upon which American or Western education rest?
LITERATURE: QUESTIONS AND ACTIVITIES
The Richard Wright Newsletter" (Richard Wright Circle, 480 Nightingale
Hall, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115) provides discussions of new
developments in Wright scholarship and contains an annual bibliography.
- Write an assessment of RICHARD WRIGHT: BLACK BOY with regard to its usefulness
in showing connections between the facts of a writer's life and his works.
- Compare Black Boy with Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne
Moody. Despite the differences in age and gender, do both writers suggest
that a sense of place has special importance for the African-American writer
from the South?
- Compare Black Boy with Hunger of Memory by Richard Rodriguez.
Write a paper on how an autobiographer, considered to be in a minority group,
uses diverse strategies to control self-representation against the constraints
of ethnicity and language.
- In 1940, the year Native Son was published, John Steinbeck's The
Grapes of Wrath (1939) was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Examine the critical
reception both of these novels received. Discuss why these equally compelling
books occupy rather different places in American literary standards.
- Compare the small number of Wright's haiku in print with classical Japanese
examples of this poetic form. Explain the aesthetic difference between Wright's
poems and those he might have used as models. Write some haiku of your own.
- Black Power, Pagan Spain, The Color Curtain, and White Man, Listen!
are some of Wright's works. Compare the prose in Wright's early essays from
the late 1930's and early 1940's with the prose of one of the books listed
above. What remarkable differences do you detect?
- Examine Uncle Tom's Children, Black Boy, and Native Son and
try to identify what might be called existential elements. To what in Wright's
life experiences might we attribute his affinity for existentialism?
- Clips from the movie versions (1951 and 1987) of Native Son are used
in the documentary. View these movie versions after reading the novel. How
does the modification of the plot in these movie versions affect your regard
for Wright's novel?
PSYCHOLOGY: QUESTIONS AND ACTIVITIES
Native Son, Black Boy, Rite of Passage, Lawd Today!, The Outsider, The
Long Dream, Uncle Tom's Children, Eight Men, Savage Holiday, Black Power,
and The Color Curtain are some of Richard Wright's works that may be
used in the study of psychology:
- What do Wright's writings reveal about his understanding of African-American
psychology?
- Discuss the terms "paranoia" and "paranoid." Do you
think Wright could have suffered from delusions of persecution? Why or why
not?
- Was Wright depressed? What symptoms of depression, if any, did Wright exhibit
in his writings?
- One portion of Wright's original Black Boy manuscript was published
as the essay, "I Tried to be a Communist" in The God That Failed
(New York: Harper, 1950). Discuss how Wright weighs his alienation from Communism
with his basic faith in the principles of Marxism. Explore the special topics
of Wright's alienation from organized religion in Black Boy and from
certain aspects of West African culture in Black Power.
- Discuss Wright's depiction of adolescent psychology in Rite of Passage.
How does it differ from his depiction of the same in Native Son and
The Long Dream? How do you account for the differences?
- Discuss the nature of prejudice and how prejudice was and continues to be
an exceptionally powerful force in American life. What does the documentary
enable you to discern about Wright's responses to prejudice?
- Do you think Wright blamed others for his problems? Do you think it is psychologically
healthy to place blame on others? What is the healthy way to handle problems,
feelings, and fears both real and imagined? Could Wright have handled his
problems in another manner?
- Define the psychological term "projection." Do you think Wright
projected his own feelings on to others? Is projection a defense mechanism?
Of what was Wright afraid?
- Debate whether the traumas Wright reports that he suffered during his childhood
and youth are responsible for his essentially negative portrayals of women
in his fiction.
- Many artists, writers, musicians, poets, actors, etc., have dealt with personal
pain through their artistic endeavors. Discuss the negative and positive aspects
of going through pain in this manner. Discuss what human needs are met by
using this manner of dealing with problems. Did Wright deal with his personal
pain through his writings? What personal needs did this satisfy for him?
SOCIOLOGY
Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City (1945)
by St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton, Native Son, Black Boy, The Outsider,
Lawd Today!, Rite of Passage, Uncle Tom's Children, 12 Million Black Voices,
and The Long Dream are relevant in discussions of the sociology of the
South, race, and culture:
- What type of society was present in Paris for young black artists and writers
that was not present in the United States during the same time? Has this changed?
- What reasons can you give for the Communist political party encouraging
Richard Wright's efforts and offering to teach him how to write?
- What description of gangs does Wright provide in Native Son and Rite
of Passage? Do you discern any subtle distinctions in his portrayal? Is
the concept of a gang radically different fifty years later?
- Review several sociological studies of Chicago prior to 1950. How do they
describe what might be understood as the parallel yet connected societies
inhabited by blacks and whites in an urban environment? What insights about
this phenomenon can be gained from reading Wright's introduction to Black
Metropolis?
- Write a critique of the lawyer's defense of Bigger Thomas in Native Son.
What are the weaknesses of trying to make a case on the grounds of criminal
causation? How are the specifics of sociological investigations transformed
by the language used in the courtroom or by the lawyer's rhetorical strategies?
- Discuss the caution that should be used in reading fiction that incorporates
sociological information. Use Native Son and Rite of Passage
as test cases for discussion.
- How does Wright treat the subject of accommodation in Black Boy and
The Long Dream? To what degree of cooperation and domination does he
draw attention?
- How did role expectation and role conflict seem to function in Wright's
life? How are they reflected in his autobiographical writings and in his fiction?
- Is the frequently used term "ghetto" both an accurate and adequate
description of urban black communities in various regions of the United States?
- Describe the social class to which Wright belonged at various periods in
his life. What does the documentary illustrate about social mobility? How
was Wright's life effected?
- Examine The Long Dream for its portrayal of Southern black middle
class life. Does Wright use stereotypes or is his treatment consistent with
sociological descriptions prior to 1960?
- Do you think the Communist Party wanted to control Wright's writings? Did
they want him to leave the Party? Did Wright think that the Communist Party
should fight more for the plight of the Negro race? Discuss your ideas.
- What happened to Wright's finances after he moved to Paris? Discuss how
being black and poor or white and poor in the United States would be different
in Paris.
POLITICAL SCIENCE/CULTURAL STUDIES: QUESTIONS AND ACTIVITIES
For the purpose of cultural studies, all of Wright's works are relevant. For
studies in political science, special attention should be given to Native
Son, The Outsider, Uncle Tom's Children, Eight Men, and Rite of Passage.
- Why did Communism ultimately fail as an alternative political movement
in this country?
- Discuss what political conditions in the United States made Communism attractive
to Richard Wright and a number of other black intellectuals. Why did Wright
leave the Communist Party?
- After viewing the documentary, examine the term "ideology." How
did the program represent the ideological dimensions of Wright's life and
work? What distinction should be drawn between ideology and core political
values (criteria by which people make political decisions and evaluation)?
- What features of political economy in urban areas did Wright seem to be
most concerned about in his work?
- What does the documentary urge us to consider about the importance of race
and class in the study of international politics? How did Wright's sense of
himself as a man of the West compromise his authority to speak for non-Western
people?
- Wright attracted unusual attention from government agencies in the United
States, Great Britain, and France. Consider the nature of politics during
the Cold War. Why might Wright's work have been seen as politically threatening?
- Discuss to what degree the whole of Wright's works constitutes a model for
an individual's study of culture and change.
BIBLIOGRAPHIES
I. Richard Wright: Primary Works
Fiction
- Uncle Tom's Children. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1938; HarperCollins,
1993.
- Native Son.New York: Harper & Brothers, 1940; HarperCollins, 1993.
- The Outsider. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1953; HarperCollins, 1993.
- Savage Holiday. New York: Avon Books, 1954; Jackson: University Press
of Mississippi, 1994.
- The Long Dream. New York: Doubleday, 1958.
- Eight Men. Cleveland: World, 1961.
- Lawd Today!New York: Avon Books, 1963; Boston: Northeastern University
Press, 1993.
- Rite of Passage. New York: Harper Collins, 1994.
Nonfiction
- Twelve Million Black Voices.New York: Viking Press, 1941.
- Black Boy.New York: Harper & Brothers, 1945; HarperCollins, 1993.
- Black Power.New York: Harper & Brothers, 1954.
- The Color Curtain.Cleveland: World, 1954; Jackson: University Press
of Mississippi, 1994.
- Pagan Spain. New York: Harper & Row, 1957.
- White Man, Listen!New York: Doubleday, 1957.
- American Hunger.New York: Harper & Row, 1977.
II. Richard Wright: Secondary Sources
Bibliography
- Fabre, Michel and Charles T. Davis. Richard Wright: A Primary Bibliography.
Boston: G. K. Hall, 1982. A bibliography of Wright's published and unpublished
works in the Richard Wright Archive, James Weldon Johnson Collection of Afro-American
Literature, Beineke Library, Yale University.
- Kinnamon, Keneth [with Joseph Benson, Michel Fabre, and Craig Werner]. A
Richard Wright Bibliography: Fifty Years of Criticism and Commentary, 1933-1982.
Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1988. The most comprehensive bibliographic
study of secondary sources, including books, scholarly articles and reviews,
newspaper reviews, doctoral dissertations, master's theses, handbook, study
guides, interviews, chapters in books, encyclopedia articles, and handbooks.
Kinnamon has begun to publish annual supplements, beginning with materials
published in the"Richard Wright Newsletter".
Biography
- Fabre, Michel. The Unfinished Quest of Richard Wright. New York:
Morrow, 1973; Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993.
- Gayle, Addison. Richard Wright: Ordeal of a Native Son. New York:
Doubleday, 1990.
- Walker, Margaret. Richard Wright: Daemonic Genius. New York: Amistad,
1988.
- Webb, Constance. Richard Wright: A Biography.New York: Putnam, 1968.
- Williams, John A. The Most Native of Sons: A Biography of Richard Wright.
Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1970.
Critical Studies: Books and Collections of Essays
- Baker, Houston A., Jr., ed. Twentieth Century Interpretations of Native
Son. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1972.
- Brignano, Russell C. Richard Wright: An Introduction to the Ma and His
Works. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1970.
- Butler, Robert. Native Son: The Emergence of a New Black Hero. Boston:
Twayne, 1991.
- Fabre, Michel. Richard Wright: Books and Writers. Jackson: University
Press of Mississippi, 1990.
- Fabre, Michel. The World of Richard Wright.Jackson: University Press
of Mississippi, 1985.
- Fishburn, Katherine. Richard Wright's Hero: The Faces of a Rebel-Victim.
Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1977.
- Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. and K. A. Appiah, eds. Richard Wright: Critical
Perspectives Past and Present. New York: Amistd, 1993.
- Hakutani, Yoshinobu, ed. Critical Essays on Richard Wright. Boston:
G. K. Hall, 1982.
- Joyce, Joyce Ann. Richard Wright's Art of Tragedy. Iowa City: U
of Iowa Press, 1986.
- Kinnamon, Keneth and Michel Fabre, eds. Conversations with Richard Wright.
Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1993.
- Kinnamon, Keneth. The Emergence of Richard Wright: A Study Literature
and Society. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1973.
- Kinnamon, Keneth, ed. New Essays on Native Son. New York: Cambridge
UP, 1990.
- Macksey, Richard and Frank E. Moorer, eds. Richard Wright: A Collection
of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1984.
- Margolies, Edward. The Art of Richard Wright. Carbondale: Southern
Illinois UP, 1969.
- Miller, Eugene E. Voice of a Native Son: The Poetics of Richard Wright.
Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1990.
- Rampersad, Arnold, ed. Richard Wright: A Collection of Critical Essays.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1995.
III. General Background Sources
- Aaron, Daniel. Writers on the Left. New York: Avon, 1965.
- Abramson, Doris E. Negro Playwrights in the American Theatre, 1925-1959.
New York: Columbia UP, 1969.
- Allport, Gordon. The Nature of Prejudice. Garden City, NY: Doubleday,
1958.
- Appadora, A. The Bandung Conference. New Delhi: The Indian Council
of World Affairs, 1955.
- Apter, David E. Ghana in Transition. New York: Atheneum, 1963.
- Black, Patti Carr. Documentary Portrait of Mississippi: The Thirties.
Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1982.
- Bond, Horace Mann. Education of the Negro in the American Social Order.
New York: Prentice-Hall, 1934.
- Bottomore, Tom, ed. A Dictionary of Marxist Thought. Cambridge:
Harvard UP, 1983.
- Boykin, A. Wade, Anderson J. Franklin and J. Frank Yates, eds. Research
Directions of Black Psychologists. New York: Russell Sage Foundation,
1979.
- Bullock, Henry A. A History of Negro Education in the South from 1619
to the Present. New York: Praeger, 1967.
- Cobb, James C. The Most Southern Place on Earth: The Mississippi Delta
and the Roots of Regional Identity. New York: Oxford UP, 1992.
- Cruse, Harold. The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual. New York:
William Morrow, 1967.
- Daniel, Pete. Deep'n As It Come: The 1927 Mississippi River Flood.
New York: Oxford UP, 1977.
- ________. The Shadow of Slavery: Peonage in the South, 1901-1969.
Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1972.
- Davis, Allison. Leadership, Love & Aggression. New York: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, 1983.
- Davis, John P., ed. The American Negro Reference Book. Englewood
Cliffs, NJ; Prentice-Hall, 1966.
- Dees, Jesse W., Jr. and James S. Hadley. Jim Crow. Ann Arbor, MI:
Ann Arbor Publishers, 1951.
- Drake, St. Clair and Horace Cayton. Black Metropolis. New York:
Harcourt Brace, 1945.
- Draper, Theodore. American Communism and Soviet Russia. New York:
Viking, 1960.
- Dubofsky, Melvyn and Stephen Burwood, eds. Women and Minorities During
the Great Depression. New York: Garland, 1990.
- Fabre, Genevi've and Robert O'Meally, eds. History and Memory in African-American
Culture. New York: Oxford UP, 1994.
- Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. New York: Grove, 1967.
- _____________. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove, 1968.
- Foner, Philip S. Organized Labor and the Black Worker 1619-1973.
New York: Praeger, 1974.
- Franklin, John Hope. From Slavery to Freedom. New York: Knopf, 1980.
- Gutman, Herbert. The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom. New York:
Vintage/Random House, 1976.
- Hale-Benson, Janice. Black Children: Their Roots, Culture, and Learning
Styles. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1982.
- Hanushek, Eric. Education and Race. Cambridge: Heath, 1972.
- Haywood, Harry. Black Bolshevik: Autobiography of an Afro-American Communist.
Chicago: Liberation Press, 1978.
- Herskovits, Melville J. The Myth of the Negro Past. Boston: Beacon,
1941.
- Howe, Irving and Louis Coser. The American Communist Party: A Critical
History. New York: Praeger, 1957.
- Huggins, Nathan I. Harlem Renaissance. New York: Oxford UP, 1971.
- Jeffreys-Jones, Rhodri. The CIA and American Democracy. New Haven:
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