Wright, Richard 273Levine, Lawrence. Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-
American Folk Th ought from Slavery to Freedom. Oxford: Ox-
ford University Press, 1977.
Southern, Eileen. Th e Music of Black Americans: A History. 3rd ed.
New York: Norton, 1997.Wright, Richard
Richard Wright (1908–1960) a novelist, short story writer,
political journalist, and essayist, was most famous for
the novel Native Son. Wright was born on a plantation in
Mississippi. His father, Nathaniel Wright, was an illiter-
ate sharecropper, and his mother, Ella Wilson Wright, was
a schoolteacher. His birth name was Nathaniel Wright.
Richard Wright experienced many hardships before
becoming a writer. His father abandoned his family when
he was fi ve years old, and his mother supported her fam-
ily as a cook. When his mother became ill, his family went
to live with several relatives in Mississippi, Arkansas, and
Tennessee. He and his brother spent a period of time in an
orphanage. Consequently, Wright was not able to complete
a full year of school before the age of 12. However, in 1925,
he graduated as the valedictorian from Smith Robertson
Junior High School in Jackson, Mississippi, and the Jack-
son Southern Register published his fi rst story, consisting
of three parts, “Th e Voodoo of Hell’s Half-Acre.” Although
Wright was excited about the publication, his family and
friends felt it was unrealistic to believe that African Ameri-
cans could overcome racial prejudices and barriers. Wright
quit high school aft er only a few weeks to earn money.
In 1925, Wright discovered the Atlantic Monthly, Harp-
er’s Magazine, and naturalist writer H. L. Mencken. In 1927,
Wright moved to Chicago and worked as a dishwasher and
delivery boy until he gained employment with the postal
service. In 1930, aft er the stock market crash, Wright lost
his postal job and started to work on a novel Cesspool—
published posthumously in the 1970s as Lawd Today!—that
refl ected his postal service experiences. In 1931, Wright
published the short story “Superstition” in the short-lived
Abbott’s Monthly Magazine. He also wrote through the Fed-
eral Writers’ Project.
Wright was a witness and participant in the Com-
munist and the Pan Africanist political and philosophical
movements. While living in Chicago, Wright was involvedvocal infl ections allowed workers to interpret the music
and text in their own personal way.
During slavery, singing was an essential part of black
culture because it addressed the emotional needs of slaves
and created a sense of community. Work songs accompa-
nied a variety of work, such as picking cotton and sweet po-
tatoes, loading and unloading ships, and wielding axes and
hoes. For slaves and laborers, singing relieved the monot-
ony of work, alleviated tension, eased the enormity of their
problems, and created a communal environment. Work
songs that were sung on plantations, and subsequently on
levees and prison farms, depicted the oppressed lives of
slaves, stevedores, and inmates. Th e texts of work songs
oft en provided an escape from the harsh realities of life
as an African American. Because of their oppressed lives
as African Americans, these songs, like the spirituals and
blues, created a shared experience. Black slaves and laborers
oft en commented on the transgressions of the boss, pro-
vided vivid descriptions of the work, or reminisced about a
woman. “Rosie,” a song about a woman and possibly sung in
prison camps and on levees, allowed workers to transcend
their presence to reminiscence about the past and contem-
plate the future. From the end of slavery and throughout
most of the 20th century, work songs were an important
part of prison culture. For example, in the convict lease sys-
tem, a brutal system where men and women were subjected
to oppressive conditions, work songs coordinated work,
expressed the misery of the conditions, and depicted the
oppressive life of the black inmate. Other common work
songs included “Diamond Joe,” “Look Down Th at Long
Lonesome Road,” “Lost John,” and “Jumping Judy.” Subse-
quently, by the mid-20th century, work songs had become
obsolete and lost their signifi cance, as popular genres be-
came a refl ection of progressive generations. Work songs
were undeniably one of the most expressive secular folk
forms that refl ected the African American experience.
See also: Blues Music; Field Hands; Field Hollers; Slave Cul-
ture; Slave Plantation
Ralph A. RussellBibliography
Barlow, William. Looking Up at Down: Th e Emergence of Blues
Culture. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989.
Epstein, Dena. Sinful Tunes and Spirituals: Black Folk Music to the
Civil War. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977.