Richard Wright National Freedom Day

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Maurice Freeman
Dr. Patricia West
May 4, 2014
English 1102

Major Richard R. Wright Sr.
Picture this, having to travel over 10,000 miles to get something you really wanted accomplished. This is one of the interesting points Mitch Kachun brings up about Mr. Wright in his essay “Major Richard R. Wright Sr. National Freedom Day, and the Rhetoric of Freedom in the 1940’s. In this essay he not only tells the very interesting story of Wright’s life but he also goes in details about everything that came up in his way and what he did to change the world and mold it to what we see today. One thing Kachun reminds us in this paper is to never forget or past and where we came from, because if we do we will repeat it. Also to pay our respects to a wonderful man who paved the way for us African American college students to be in the place that we are today.
The author opens up the essay with one of Richard wrights famous quotes "A beacon to oppressed people everywhere”. When I first heard this quote it really stuck to me because it just seemed really powerful because of what he was saying. When someone is oppressed he means that they have been suffering from something and they are waiting for change of some sort. So when he called out a beacon to oppressed people he is saying the time of long suffering is over and it’s time for change. The Kachun opened up with this quote in his essay because this one big thing that everybody understood and opening up an essay with it would have the same effect that wright had when he first said it.
Going on to read more I came along to this quote “While emancipation celebrations played an important role for many black communities, white Americans never fully embraced the tradition, and African American att...

... middle of paper ...

...rted Haitian coffee, until the outbreak of World War II curtailed that venture, and in 1945 he traveled to San Francisco as one of many African Americans who worked unofficially to incorporate their perspectives into the founding of the United Nations. Age can never slow you down from pursuing your dreams in life and reading this essay about my first President of Savannah State University Mr. Richard R. Wight has really taught me that. Just from the beginning of his life he was just on a path of greatness, and even after his retirement he felt that there was a need and he tried his best to meet it. With the bank he had opened during the war. Even after his death in 1947 he legacy is still alive and breathing for us future black scholars to grasp and make our own. Maybe one day I would be as popular and out spoken as Mr. Wight because now I know that “we are rising”.

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