Analysis Of Richard Wright's Black Boy

Richard Wright was a novelist who wrote about being black in American. He used his writings as a form of advertisement to civilize communism. Being that he was born into slavery he experienced oppression since birth. His first published novel was Uncle Tom’s Children and the book consisted of different short stories of racial oppression in the South such as lynching and the KKK. One of his most defining novels is Black Boy as he wrote about the cultural, political, racial, religion, and social issues of the late 19th century. The novel Black Boy was Richard Wright’s way of telling his own story about life from when he moved to Chicago at the age of nineteen. There are difficulties with his white colleagues and involuntary social isolation.

In America, he is not just growing up; he is growing up black and growing up in America as a black man is hard for you to constantly prove yourself because you’re already judged before people get to know you. As a young kid, Wright would often hear the word “Negro”, so he asks his mother, if he was a “Negro”. She had an honest response. Her response was society will label you one, though you are actually of mixed white, Native American, and African ancestry (Wright). As he grew older, he began to notice how families in the south were more of a privileged class and notices how black families were server to those white families. It is almost impossible for Richard to grow up without the label of black boy constantly being applied to him just like it is in 2016 for black

Jim Crow was a white actor who had a popular television show mocking African Americans. This is how the “Jim Crow Law” came into existence. This law described primarily how the south in the 1877 to the 1950 use to describe the segregation system. It was a state law passed in the South that established different rules for blacks and whites. Every African American life in the south was effected during the Jim Crow laws. Black textile workers could not work in the same room as whites, nor enter through the same door. They were not allowed to even gaze out of the same window as the white employees. During the times of this law, industries employment were hard to come by for blacks. When they were hired, many of the unions passed rules to exclude them. Some black workers acted as “clowns” for white men. This was done to order to gain favors with the whites, make extra money to move north. But Wright was determined to make a better name for himself after seeing his family belittle themselves. He knew this type of foolishness would never allow him to save enough money to be able to leave. The only thing that gave Wright comfort and peace, came in reading books. He begins a serious effort in self-education in Memphis, and reads enough that he feels he has gained some knowledge of the world beyond the American