rm

king.
. s in...
gaugri.
35.5.;

*man‘.

’ TI
‘3"
a,

. it»:

a a i.
7 ‘a
u «- ALI
1.02.; 5

)5.

u:

t. #4.:
. u A34... .

.umwauflfi :1.

nm.uu..z

”y

.

f‘. u»
.

31.6..

.23

ac.

 

 

 

 

 

 

,. .4 n~ :1.

(27...!

 

. r1: .
5 5:1;fiu 3:. r
.\ . su 3 I
2...? 2%.»: .

. . .3911.

.132: E. .
.r..l‘...14:: 2

in?

II
35:.» mix»). a.
3
,. 55.55.. . u!:i$.n
3. 9!... AI): = .112...
3 .351: .3. :nt .1
. 52:31:: . . s

5...! a.
mafia
.

5
H2

:38iq . L.

3321..

2 5|: .. It 3.)}

.1

. .t
. . : .
hanwhw...flwxa.

5.191.113.

is. .v
1. .15
5!...

8 «.7
3.5.3.5!“

t: 3. I

3%}? “A

3.3.9.5531
{x 1.1.1.9 fl .

3. 3.: 3!.
i... $.33...» 9 t:
1.213....rflztllil.‘
1:31.94...)
1’? 1.19.!

. 12531.... 7:59...
.,v..|). .35.}:

a.

 

'll'

 

THESlS

 

 

“may willlllfllulluwlgnlwll
Michigan State
University

 

 

This is to certify that the

dissertation entitled

BEYOND PRIMITIV ISM
RICHARD WRIGHT AND THE CHICAGO RENAISSANCE

presented by

Byron D. Mason

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

 

 

 

PhD. degree in American Studies
gay/q 91.05?
fiajor [yofessor
August 21, 2000

Date

 

MS U is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution 0- 12771

PLACE IN RETURN BOX to remove this checkout from your record.
TO AVOID FINES return on or before date due.
MAY BE RECALLED with earlier due date if requested.

 

DATE DUE DATE DUE DATE DUE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

11/00 cm.wS-p.14

BEYOND PRIMITIVISM: RICHARD WRIGHT AND THE CHICAGO
RENAISSANCE

BY

Byron Douglas Mason

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of American Studies

2000

ABSTRACT

BEYOND PRIMITIVISM: RICHARD WRIGHT AND THE CHICAGO
RENAISSANCE

BY

Byron Douglas Mason

With the publication and favorable reception of Native
Son in 1940, Richard Wright became the leading black writer
of his time. This novel would be the culmination of nearly
two decades of creative endeavors. It would also be the
creative centerpiece of the Chicago Renaissance. Wright’s
vivid, groundbreaking story of Bigger Thomas and his demise
would mark a significant departure from previous
African-American writing in its stark realism and social
protest.

Three years earlier, Wright made it clear what he
thought black writers should be doing in his essay
“Blueprint for Negro Writing.” The new generation of black
writers, according to Wright, should speak directly to the
needs of black people. In order to do this, these writers
should study, understand, and embrace black folklore, black
nationalism, and Marxism. Through this enlightenment, black

writers would produce literature that was socially relevant.

Wright articulated the key principles of the Chicago
Renaissance. This study will analyze Wright's role as a
facilitator of this renaissance.

In this study, I will contextualize the Chicago
Renaissance historically. Then I will explore Wright's
literary and cultural theories. Following that, I will focus
on how Wright's novels Lawd Today! and Native Son illustrate
Wright's theories. More specifically, I will describe how
they signify a departure from the Harlem Renaissance of the
previous decade. I will also discuss Wright's peers within
the Chicago Renaissance community. Finally, I will assess
the significance of the Chicago Renaissance years on

Wright’s career.

Copyright by
BYRON DOUGLAS MASON
2000

To Ma and Dad

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank Dr. Barry Gross and the members of my

guidance committee--Dr. Lisa Fine, Dr. Harry Reed, and Dr.

Kay Rout for their insight, support and patience.

vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION ............................................. 1

CHAPTER ONE
THE BLACK BELT TRANSFORMED: RICHARD WRIGHT, CHICAGO, AND
THE SOUTH SIDE WRITERS'GROUP ............................ 12

CHAPTER TWO
REVISING THE PARADIGM: RICHARD WRIGHT’S THEORETICAL
ARGUMENTS ............................................... 42

CHAPTER THREE
THE APPRENTICE NOVEL: LAWD TODAY! ....................... 64

CHAPTER FOUR

IN THE ABSENCE OF SOUTHERN SOIL: NATIVE SON AND THE HARLEM
RENAISSANCE ............................................. 93

CHAPTER FIVE
BIG MAT, BIGGER THOMAS, AND BRONZEVILLE: THE CHICAGO

RENAISSANCE COMMUNITY .................................. 116
CHAPTER SIX

CONCLUSION ............................................. 148
WORKS CITED ............................................ 166

vii

INTRODUCTION

The Chicago Renaissance is a somewhat overlooked black
cultural movement of the 1930’s and 1940's. This renaissance
would reach its apex with the publication of Richard
Wright's Native Son in 1940. With this novel, Wright put his
theoretical arguments into practice in a most profound
manner. He would also, as Robert Bone has noted, “change the
course of Negro writing in America.” This study is an
analysis of Richard Wright's ideas and activities as they
relate to the Chicago Renaissance. I will maintain that
Wright was a facilitator of this renaissance. Through his
theoretical arguments, the formation of the South Side
Writers’ Group, as well as the publication of Lawd Today! in
1935 and Native Son in 1940, Wright articulated and
exemplified the key principles of this Chicago-based black
cultural movement.

In terms of a theoretical framework, this study will
analyze the Chicago Renaissance as a transitional phase in
black cultural expression in the twentieth century. The
Harlem Renaissance of the 1920’s and 1930’s witnessed the
emergence of the New Negro who sought to define the black
identity through a celebration of black folklore, the black
middle-class, and the “primitive” facets of black culture

that were untouched by modernization. The Chicago

Renaissance of the 1930's and 1940’s witnessed a shift from
a celebration of jazz culture and primitivism to a new
social consciousness. Just as World War I and the Marcus
Garvey movement served as social catalysts for the new black
militancy of the 1920's, the Great Depression forced a new
generation of black writers and intellectuals to take a hard
look at the plight of the masses of black people and the
black experience in general. This new social consciousness
gave way to social protest in black expression.

The social protest of the Chicago Renaissance would
become much more militant and nationalistic during the Black
Arts movement of the 1960’s and 1970's. As an outgrowth of
the Black Power movement, the Black Arts movement witnessed
the development of a Black Aesthetic. Black self-assertion
reached a new level as a generation of writers and
intellectuals sought to create whole new criteria by which
to evaluate black art. The cultural ideology of the Black
Arts movement was obviously rooted in the social
consciousness, protest and realism of the Chicago
Renaissance.

I will begin the study by contextualizing the Chicago
Renaissance historically(Why Chicago? Why the 1930's?).
Chicago’s rich cultural and intellectual history lended the
city to a newphase of black creative expression. Throughout

the mid and late nineteenth century, Chicago was transformed

from a Midwestern prairie town to a sprawling metropolis. In
the advent of this transformation, the city witnessed
significant developments in newspaper publishing as well as
the growth of literary realism. As Chicago became a new
cultural center, it also became the focal point of a mass
migration of African—Americans. Hailed as the “Promised
Land,” Chicago attracted scores of black southerners

from across the deep South. In addition to the historical
background of the Chicago Renaissance, I will analyze the
intellectual atmosphere of the period as well as Richard
Wright's role in the formation of the South Side Writers'
Group.

I will then analyze Wright's 1937 essay “Blueprint for
Negro Writing." In this essay, Wright postulates that in
order for black writers to truly understand the black
experience in America they must study and embrace black
folklore. Black folklore contained historical experiences
and rich cultural expressions that would serve as excellent
source material. Black folklore was created by the black
masses. By tapping into this folklore, black writers could
give their art a certain depth and realism.

Another issue that Wright wanted black writers to
confront is black nationalism. According to Wright, black
nationalism was a direct consequence of segregation and

racial violence. It was an unavoidable aspect of black life.

Black artists, maintained Wright, should work to transcend
black nationalism by understanding and embracing it. Then

the issue would cease to be a serious “problem” and black

writers could broaden their perspective.

The perspective of black writers could also be
broadened through a Marxist analysis of the plight of their
people. Wright pointed out quite forcefully that this
analysis would expose the horrors and injustices of
capitalism. Black artists would then have a deeper
understanding of the exploitation that affects their
community. Again, as with black folklore and black
nationalism, if black artists were able to grasp and
comprehend this ideology, they would be more capable of
speaking to the masses and their experience. Wright was
advocating a realism that he did not see in the Harlem
Renaissance a decade earlier.

Wright would significantly depart from his Harlem
Renaissance predecessors with his 1935 work Lawd Today! and
his 1940 work Native Son. Lawd Today! is significant because
it was his first attempt at a serious novel. The subject of
the work is one typical day in the life of Jake Jackson.
Jackson is a man consumed by self—hatred and he blindly
pursues his middle-class aspirations. His life consists of
perpetual debt, a dreary dead-end job, and debauchery. He is

unconscious about his plight as a working poor

African—American living on the South Side of Chicago. He is
hostile to reading and education because he believes that
they addle the brain.

Jake's warped and self—destructive mentality is shared
by his peers at the post office. In addition to playing
cards, drinking, and chasing prostitutes, Jake and his
friends often reminisce about their southern past. They
describe, in vivid detail, the smell of flowers and other
pleasures of their rural environment. This world is lost to
them in their urban environment. Wright dramatizes the loss
of folk culture and folkways in the urbanization process
which consumes Jake and his cohorts.

This loss of folk culture is dramatized even further in
Wright's 1940 work Native Son. In Native Son Wright created
a central character and articulated themes that would
significantly depart from the Harlem Renaissance. Bigger
Thomas was frightening because he was very real. He is a
composite character based on black youths that Wright
observed in his native Mississippi and Chicago's South Side.
He is also, according to Wright, the product of a racist and
oppressive society. Bigger, like many black folks living in
northern urban centers, is the end result of an urbanization
process that robs people of their humanity. Unlike Claude
McKay's Jake or Banjo, Bigger is not a free-spirited,

jazz-loving primitive-exotic rebelling against a modernized

society. He is a “monster.”

The world in which Bigger lives is evoked quite
effectively by Wright throughout the novel. The
claustrophobic kitchenettes are permeated with rats and
roaches and help to create a sense of dread and despair.
They also help to create a sense of realism that Wright had
advocated in “Blueprint for Negro Writing.” The reality that
Wright presents was hardly seen during the Harlem
Renaissance. During the Harlem Renaissance, Harlem was often
celebrated as a place of good music, good food, and racial
pride and self-determination. The city was a place where the
only thing that black people had to do was “be black.” There
was no Jim Crow or racial violence. In Native Son, the city
was a ghetto. It was a place of poverty, isolation, and
self-hatred.

The dominant themes of Native Son and Lawd
Today!(urbanization, the loss of folk culture) would be the
dominant themes of the Chicago Renaissance. The social
realism of the renaissance would tie a new generation of
black writers together. The Chicago Renaissance community
included William Attaway, Gwendolyn Brooks, Margaret
Walker, and two veterans of the Harlem Renaissance--Arna
Bontemps and Langston Hughes. One year after Native Son was
published, William Attaway produced an epic tale of the

black migration experience. In Blood on the Forge, Attaway

examined the lives of three Kentucky brothers who are forced
to leave their native south. They end up in a Pennsylvania
steel mill and are transformed from simple country folks
into “gray men.” Attaway chronicles, in vivid detail, how
each brother is destroyed, physically, emotionally, and
spiritually, by the new machine environment.

Although Attaway describes the new urban environment as
a destructive force, he does not romanticize the southern
past. The Moss brothers are subjected to exploitation in a
harsh sharecropping system and live in the shadow of Jim
Crow and various forms of racial violence. Although they
escape these southern realities, they soon discover new
forms of segregation, violence, and exploitation in the
industrial north. Over the course of the novel, the Moss
brothers lose bits and pieces of their humanity.

Urbanization and its destructive consequences was also
a theme echoed by Gwendolyn Brooks. Brooks wrote almost
exclusively about Chicago's South Side, which soon became
known as “Bronzeville.” In 1945, her first collection of
poetry A Street in Bronzeville was published. Brooks
examined the lives of the dispossessed. These were people
who were seemingly trapped in a desolate world of
kitchenettes and dark, deadend alleys. But in describing the
plight of the residents, Brooks provides a small glimmer of

hope. Some of the characters find joy in small, seemingly

insignificant things. Like her Chicago Renaissance

peers, Brooks took a sociological analysis and transformed
it into evocative poetry. This poetry exemplified a certain
social consciousness that defined the period.

Social consciousness was also at the heart of another
poet's work. Margaret Walker was militant in her call to the
black community to “rise and take control” in her 1942
collection of poetry For My People. In the title poem Walker
speaks to the folk history and struggles of black people in
America. She describes a history of slave songs; hard,
fruitless work; and the painful discovery of the realities
of race and class. She also describes the plight of the
disenfranchised in 1942 America. These are people who hunger
for the basics of survival(food and decent clothing) as well
as some kind of ownership(land) in their lives. The poem is
also critical of social institutions(churches, schools,
clubs and societies) which, according to Walker, have
failed miserably in affecting the lives of the masses of
black people. Most importantly, Walker's work speaks
directly to those masses.

The Chicago Renaissance community was not limited to
one generation of black writers. Two veterans of the Harlem
Renaissance-~Arna Bontemps and Langston Hughes-were pivotal
figures in the era of social realism and protest. Arna

Bontemps was attending graduate school at the University of

Chicago during the 1930's. In 1936, his novel Black Thunder
was published. The story is a fictional account of an
aborted slave revolt in 1800 Virginia. The power of the
novel comes from its realism. Bontemps captured the language
of the slaves and provided a detailed description of the
slave community and customs. Power also stems from

the novel's underlying theme--the attempt by black people in
an oppressive society to assert their humanity. Richard
Wright praised the work in a book review for its realism. He
saw it as a welcomed departure from previous forms of black
writing.

Langston Hughes was another “elder statesman” of the
Chicago Renaissance. In 1936, Hughes attended the first
meeting of the National Negro Congress. Arna Bontemps and
Richard Wright were also there. After the meeting, Bontemps
introduced Wright to Hughes. Hughes spent months at a time
in Chicago doing research for a historical novel. He served
as a mentor, benefactor, and friend to younger writers such
as Gwendolyn Brooks. Most importantly, Hughes, like
Bontemps, was a transitional figure between the Harlem
Renaissance and the Chicago Renaissance. Although he was
central to the New Negro movement, he was never content with
simply celebrating the uniqueness of black people and their
culture. He always advocated producing art that was socially

relevant.

In 1926, he produced a manifesto on the direction of
black writing at the time. In “The Negro Artist and the
Racial Mountain,” Hughes scolded his contemporaries for
running away from their “blackness” in their attempts to
become more “American.” He urged black artists to look to
their community, more specifically, he wanted them to turn
away from the black bourgeois and focus on the masses. He
also wanted black artists to stop being afraid to create art
that was racially conscious and race specific. Hughes' essay
was a precursor of sorts to Wright's “Blueprint for Negro
Writing.”

Finally, I will conclude this study by assessing the
significance of the Chicago Renaissance years on Wright's
career. It was during this period(l937—l947) that Wright
emerged and evolved as an artist and an intellectual. In
addition to publishing “Blueprint for Negro Writing,” Lawd
Today!, and Native Son, Wright also produced what many
critics regard as the strongest and most profound writing of
his entire career. Between 1941 and 1945, Wright published
three works of non-fiction: the introduction to Horace
Cayton’s and St. Clair Drake's Black.Metropolis, 12,000,000
Black Voices, and Black Boy. In each of these works Wright
demonstrates that his non—fiction is just as provocative and
emotionally charged as his fiction. These works also

demonstrate Wright's assimilation of readings from across

10

numerous disciplines-~history, sociology, philosophy,

political science.

11

CHAPTER ONE
THE BLACK BELT TRANSFORMED: RICHARD WRIGHT, CHICAGO, AND THE
SOUTH SIDE WRITERS’ GROUP

Richard Wright's personal and professional history with
the city of Chicago is rich, multilayered, and critical in
understanding the man, his career and his role in the
Chicago Renaissance. Chicago was Wright's intellectual and
creative birthplace. He fled Mississippi seeking to escape
racism and oppression but soon learned that the problems of
black people were not unique to the southern United States.1
At the same time, “he discovered a rich cultural, social,
and intellectual life in Chicago” and eventually “helped to
create the hot center of that interesting milieu.”2

The city of Chicago came to represent a land of
opportunity and hope for many African-Americans during and
after World War I. Historian James Grossman has stated that
the Great Migration of African-Americans to Chicago “turned

the attention of thousands of thousands of black southerners

toward a northern industrial world previously marginal to

 

laichard Wright, 12,000,000 Black Voices (New York: Viking
Press, 1941), 24.

2Margaret‘walker, Richard wright: Daemonic Genius (New York:
‘Warner Books, 1988), 54.

12

their consciousness.”3 The meatpacking houses of the city
offered new employment opportunities and many black
southerners saw northern cities as an escape from Jim Crow
and oppression.

Equal to racial violence and Jim Crow(but not in the
same negative class), the Chicago Defender was instrumental
in encouraging black migration to the city. The popular
weekly was founded in 1905 by Georgia native Robert Abbott.
From its inception, the paper displayed a militancy that was
virtually unheard of at the time. It reported extensively on
racial violence throughout the South. And it was highly
critical of the white Southern social and political
establishment.

Wide circulation of the paper was built through a
unique process. Black railroad workers from Chicago would
“get the word out” about the paper to black Southerners
during their travels. Often Pullman porters were actually
given copies to distribute to their friends.‘ By 1916, the
Defender “seemed to be everywhere; readers could by it in
the church or barber shop, two major centers of socializing

and discussion.”5 By the time of the Great Migration, the

Defender had become the nation's leading black newspaper(in

 

3James Grossman, Land of'Hope: Chicago,.Black southerners,
and the Great Migration(Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1989), 3.

‘Ibid. , 7e.

51bid. , 79.

13

terms of circulation and readership). During the summer of
1916, a larger number of unskilled industrial jobs became
available to African—Americans.6 As black southerners

poured into northern cities, the Defender began to encourage
the movement. As James Grossman points out, “Fearless,
sensationalist, and militant, the Defender advertised the
glories of Chicago so effectively that even migrants headed
for other northern cities drew their general image of the
urban North from their pages.”7

During the 1920's, black Southerners found a new
autonomy in Chicago. They could vote, they could send their
children to quality schools and they could work in factories
where they earned high wages.8 However, this did not mean
that the city was without problems. Prior to this social and
economic boom, racial tensions reached an apex with the
infamous riot of 1919.

Also, Grossman observes that in spite of this new found
“freedom,” there were “ominous forces invisible to most
migrants” which had devastating effects on the black
community.9.Although blacks could vote, their political
participation was ultimately controlled and manipulated by

white politicians. Industrial opportunity “was often limited

 

51bid., 74.
71bid.

91bid., 259-61.
91bid., 260.

14

by a lack of advancement beyond semiskilled positions and
discriminatory layoff practices” and by the end of the
1920’s, Chicago seemed to be “a city committed to
ghettoizing its black inhabitants."1°
Richard Wright arrived in Chicago during this
ghettoizing process. Margaret Walker makes this declaration
in her account of Wright’s life and career:
In 1927, Chicago was on the eve of a decade of
drastic changes that reflected the radical changes
taking place all over the United States in
politics, economics, education, the arts and
subsequently, all race relations. Richard Wright's
life and writing reflect these changes, and his
maturation years parallel the growth and
development of a great American city from a
sprawling prairie town to a modern urban
metropolis.11
Indeed, the Great Migration “transformed the black belt into
a black metropolis” as the ghetto of the South Side soon
became known as “Bronzeville” and by 1930, it “constituted
one of the world's largest concentrations of
African-Americans.”12
In addition to its complex social history, Chicago has
a long and intriguing cultural, intellectual, and literary
history. As Carla Cappetti has noted in Writing Chicago:
.MOdernism, Ethnography, and the Novel, starting with the

1890’s and for a long half-century, Chicago “came to embody

 

1°Ibid., 262.

11Walker, 54.

12Robert Bone, “Richard‘wright and the Chicago Renaissance,”
Callaloo (Summer 1986): 451.

15

the most advanced sectors of the U.S. economy, and the most
avant-garde expressions of American art."13 It was during
this period that Chicago became a “mecca of modern
journalism and newspaper humor, as well as the home of a
great deal of early American literary realism.”1‘.As a
result, “this period has been the most documented in Chicago
literary and cultural history.”15 Given this history, it is
not surprising that an African-American Chicago Renaissance
would occur. In order to understand the dynamics of the
Chicago Renaissance, it is important to understand the
intellectual atmosphere in which the movement flourished.
The 1930's was a decade of transition among African-American
thinkers and writers. As James Young points out, a new
generation emerged to challenge the prevailing ideologies of
the “aged race men” of the previous decades.16

The first three decades of the twentieth century saw
the emergence of “race spokesmen.” They were race spokesmen
because “this was their primary function in life. The race
and its welfare received their almost undivided attention
and they seldom commented on issues or events which did not

in some way relate to racial matters.”17

 

1'3Car1a Cappetti, writing'Chicago:.Mbdernism,.Ethnography;
and the Novel (New York: Columbia university Press, 1993),
12.

“Ibid. , 6.

15mm.

1“James Young,.Black writers of the Thirties (Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State university Press, 1973), ix-xii.

16

One of these older race men was historian and educator
Carter G. Woodson. Woodson advocated an educational system
that would provide the basics for African-Americans as well
as instill pride in the African and African-American
heritage and culture. According to Woodson, “this system
would help to create a unity of thought that was
indispensable to the organization of the race from
within.”18

This organization and unity of the race was also a
primary concern of W.E.B. Du Bois. During the 1930's, Du
Bois began to focus on the economic aspects of the “race
problem” in America. He urged African-Americans to create a
separate “economic nation within a nation.” In Du Bois's
mind, socialism was the solution to the race's economic
problems.19

In concert with the young radicals of the day, Du Bois
postulated that “all power in society was channeled through
well-organized conglomerations.”2° However, as James Young
notes, “unlike the young radicals, Du Bois’s socialism was
racial rather than working-class in orientation.”21 Du Bois
argued that the exploitation of African-Americans was

perpetrated by both white capitalists and the white

 

17Ibid., 34.
1°Ibid., 16.
19Ibid., 20-23.
2°Ibid., 23.
211bid., 24.

17

proletariat. Therefore, a separate black socialist economy
must be created.

Many younger observers were highly critical of Du
Bois's plan. They labeled it as “black chauvinism.” The
emphasis on race seemed to create a rift between the “old
guard” and the new generation of black thinkers came of age
during a revival of American radicalism.

During the 1930's, in the advent of the Great
Depression and social instability, the Communist party
gained a considerable foothold on the American landscape.
The party staged food, unemployment, and eviction protests.
They led unionizing drives and courted intellectuals and
African—Americans with their commitment to labor and civil
rights.

The party was aggressive in its attempts to recruit
African-Americans. They achieved minor success with a
relatively small number of black “radicals” who joined their
ranks. The numbers among whites were reportedly even
smaller. However, although the membership may have been
small, there were numerous intellectuals who allied
themselves with Communist causes.

Through these affiliations, radical magazines such as
New.Masses became the official organ of the party. There

were similar radical publications which reflected Communist

18

ideology.22 Many aspiring writers of the day, including
Wright, had their first works published in these magazines.
In fact, Wright’s first proletariat poem “A Red Love Note”
was published in Left Front in 1934. The inclusion of
Wright's work in Left Front and New Masses spoke to a
relationship between the black community and the Communist
party.

Perhaps the most vivid example of the presence of the
Communist party within the black community was the
organization of the National Negro Congress in 1936. The
National Negro Congress represented an attempt “to bring
together over 500 labor, religious, civic, racial, and
interracial organizations into some semblance of unity.”23
It was believed that if these organizations could work
together, “then they could more efficiently educate Negroes,
mold public opinion, and apply pressure for the rights of
Negro citizens.”24

The Communist party used the National Negro Congress as
part of an effort to create a “United Front Against
Fascism.” By 1940, the Congress was firmly under the control
of the party. The Congress disintegrating as members began

to realize that it was no longer an organization dedicated

 

22Nina Baym.and others, The Norton Anthology of'American
Literature, 3rd ed. (New York:'WTW3 Norton and Company,
1989), 1673.

23James Young,.Black writers of'the Thirties, 58.

“Ibid.

19

to racial equality.

In spite of these setbacks, racial equality remained at
the forefront of black intellectual activity during the
1930's. The harsh realities of the Great Depression caused
the new generation of black intellectuals to broaden their
perspective. Many came to believe that economic forces were
more important than race in the lives of
African-Americans.25.As James Young observes:

It was precisely this de-emphasis of race which
most significantly distinguished the young
radicals from their elders. These young thinkers
were social scientists, recently instructed in the
latest social theories which contended that race
was indefinable. During the Depression, it became
“fashionable” to look at all problems in an
economic frame of reference. The economic
interpretation seemed to fill the void which was
left by the elimination of the race motive.25
Although there was a de-emphasis on race during the period,
there were some within this new generation of thinkers who
“could not be categorized as either traditionally racial or
newly radical, for they incorporated elements of both into
their own thinking.”27

A. Philips Randolph, a pioneering labor organizer, was

a member of this group. Randolph emphasized race pride,

solidarity, and self-reliance in the struggle for black

equality. He also concentrated on the economic issues facing

 

25mm. , x.
251mm, 62.
27Ibid., 65.

20

the black community. Unlike the new generation of radicals,
Randolph saw race and class as being inextricably linked and
equal in the lives of African—Americans.

Randolph’s analysis was informed by his work as a labor
organizer. He stated on numerous occasions that since the
majority of African-Americans were workers, “their problems
were the same as other workers--long hours, low wages, and
unemployment.”28 Randolph's message gained national
attention when he was elected president of the National
Negro Congress in 1936.

Throughout his tenure as head of the Congress and
chairman of the March on Washington movement, “he taught
that organization was the basis of real power.”29 He advised
_that “only through the exercise of power attainable through
the organization of wage earners is it possible increasingly
to exact higher wages and shorter hours.”30 This
organization of wage earners would lead to political
activism, Randolph postulated. This political activism was
invaluable in gaining complete black equality. In January of
1941, he issued a call to African—Americans to march on
Washington in order to protest segregation and other forms
of discrimination in the armed forces and defense

industries. James Young makes this comment about Randolph's

 

2°Ibid., 66.
29Ibid., 73.
3°Ibid., 67.

21

call:
Randolph’s call was highly significant because it
was directed to the masses of blacks. It was
widely published in the Afro-American press, not
just in sophisticated race journals. It was the
most concise and simple explanation of the use of
power which any black intellectual published
during the whole depression decade. Randolph did
not just talk about the black masses, he talked to
them.31
It was this emphasis or turn toward the masses of
African-Americans which helped to shape and define black
social, political, and cultural thinking during the decade.
There was a sentiment during this period that the masses
held the key to understanding the black experience in
America.

These masses were the subject for an emerging group of
American intellectuals-—professionally trained black
sociologists. E. Franklin Frazier and Charles S. Johnson
were at the forefront. Frazier is best known for his
groundbreaking 1939 work The Negro Family in America.
Throughout the 1930’s, Frazier dedicated his energy to the
study of the black family. Within this study, Frazier also
examined the “Status of the Negro.” In league with other
radicals of the day, Frazier maintained that the problems
facing African-Americans were created by “dominant economic

forces” which affected the nation as a whole.

However grim the picture may have been, Frazier was

 

31mm. , 72-73.

22

optimistic about the future. Urbanization would “save”
African-Americans from an existence of isolation and
exploitation. As more African-Americans migrated to the
cities, they would come into contact with white workers.
This contact, along with other social forces, would help to
create a new labor consciousness among African-Americans.

Interracial labor solidarity would lead to the
“complete emancipation” of black peOple in America.
Ultimately, Frazier postulated, black equality would come
from the “complete assimilation of the values, culture, and
institutions of the dominant white society.”32

Frazier's theoretical arguments were shaped by his
training under Robert Park at the University of Chicago. It
was Park, “more than any other sociologist, who had
redirected the study of race relations away from an emphasis
on race and racial differences and toward an emphasis on the
ideas of caste, class, and status.”33 Charles S. Johnson
also studied under Robert Park during the 1920’s. As a
social scientist, “he went out of his way to try to be
objective.”3‘ This objectivity was needed in order
for black scholars to be “completely honest” in their
analysis of the black experience.

With this “objectivity,” Johnson argued, like Frazier,

 

32113161. , 50.
33Ibid.
“116161., 76.

23

that African-Americans were desperately behind the rest of
the mechanized world because of the isolation of their
peasant existence. Johnson also concurred with Frazier that
urbanization was paramount in “advancing the general culture
of the group.”35 In addition to urbanization, the black
community needed a modern education to “bring them into the
twentieth century.”36

Johnson emphasized a labor education that echoed Booker
T. Washington’s Tuskegee program. African-Americans would be
trained to develop techniques of accuracy and skill. This
would allow them to adapt and compete in a new complex,
industrial world.

Johnson’s ideas were frequently published in the organ
of the National Urban League Opportunity. Throughout the
1930's, Johnson served as editor and “published insightful
critiques of American racial practices and policies as well
as the work of a number of emerging black novelists, poets,
and playwrights.”37 Meanwhile, black journalist George
Schuyler maintained that racism flourished in America

because it was “profitable to the owning class and

flattering to the white proletariat.”:"8 He also stressed the

 

351nm. , 79 .

“mid.

37Dar1ene Clark Hine,‘William C. Hine, and Stanley Harrold,
The.African<American Ody:seyy Vbl.2 (Upper Saddle River, New
Jersey: Printice Hall, 2000), 429.

38‘Young,.Black writers, 87-91.

24

fact that the black masses should fight for economic rather
than political power. Ralph Bunche was probably one of the
most strident critics of the methodologies and ideologies of
the older race men. He contended that race and racialism
were constructs and tools used by the owning class to keep
white and black workers divided. He shared the belief of
many of his contemporaries that the key to black

empowerment was for black workers to identify with their
white counterparts in a larger class struggle.

These young intellectuals emerged during the Great
Depression. As mentioned earlier, the Depression caused this
generation to incorporate a new economic interpretation into
the analysis of the problems of African—Americans. Franklin
Roosevelt's New Deal was a response to the Depression and it
would have a profound effect on black intellectuals and
artists of the era.

The Federal Writers' Project, a subdivision of the
Works Projects Administration, became a viable institution
for many black writers and intellectuals. The purpose of the
project “was to create work for unemployed writers by
utilizing their literary skills in the public interest;”
more specifically, these writers were responsible for
creating “handbooks” or guides for each of the forty-eight

mainland states.39

 

3’Robert Bone, The Negro Novel in America (New Haven: Yale

25

The Federal Writers’ Project was more than a source of
employment, it was a world unto itself. As Robert Bone
points out, “writers were brought together through various
affiliations and activities surrounding the project: a WPA
government worker's union, an independent political and
cultural monthly entitled Direction as well as an anthology
called American Stuff which contained contributions from
Sterling Brown, Robert Hayden, and Wright.”‘° Margaret
Walker makes this observation:

What this wonderful boom to artists and writers
meant was more than bread and meat on the table.
It afforded a rich intellectual camaraderie--shop
talk or conversation on the craft and politics and
some of the most valued friendships in the
literary history of the period.‘1
The WPA not only brought creative artists together, it
helped to connect these artists with scholars in various
fields. Louis Wirth, a professor of sociology at the
University of Chicago, was the first director of the Chicago
Writers' Project. He apparently had a profound impact on
Richard Wright.

Wirth provided Wright with reading lists of

sociological material. He also introduced Wright to Robert

Park and Robert Redfield and as a result, he collaborated

with St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton on his own 12,000,000

 

University Press, 1965), 113.
4°Ibid., 113.
“Walker, Daemonic Genius, '70.

26

Black Voices(l94l) and their Black Metropolis(1945). Carla

Cappetti explains the relationship between the Chicago

School of Sociology and the Chicago School of Writing:
Chicago urban sociologists and novelists
intellectually rubbed elbows, and conceptually and
methodologically, aesthetically and thematically
stood as reference points for one another. The
practice of Chicago sociologists and novelists
points to a time when good sociology and good
literature held hands. 2

And Wright himself explains the sociological connection:
The huge mountains of fact piled up by the
Department of Sociology at the University of
Chicago gave me my first concrete vision of the
forces that molded the urban Negro’s body and
soul. It was from the scientific findings of men
like the Robert Park, Robert E. Redfield, and
Louis Wirth that I drew the meanings for my

documentary book 12,000,000 Black Voices; for my
novel Native Son‘3

The sociological dimension of the Chicago Renaissance was
one of several factors which distinguished the movement from
its predecessor--the Harlem Renaissance.

The Harlem Renaissance witnessed the emergence of the
New Negro. This New Negro’s task “was to discover and define
his culture and his contribution to what had been thought of
as a white civilization.”“ In Alain Locke's words, the
Negro “now becomes a conscious contributor and lays aside

the status of a beneficiary and ward for that of

 

“Cappetti, Writing Chicago, 32.

‘3St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton, Black Metropolis (New
York: Harper and Row, 1945), xviii-xix.

4‘Nathan Huggins, Harlem Renaissance (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1971), 59.

27

collaborator and participant in American civilization.”S

Making contributions to civilization was part of the
larger effort of race-building. Harlem Renaissance
intellectuals emphasized black achievement and race pride.
They often avoided serious problems within the black urban
community at the time. To look at these issues(poverty,
crime, violence) would have been detrimental to the building
of racial self-esteem.

Race pride was paramount in this era of post-World War
I black militancy. This New Negro would reject accommodation
and fight vehemently for social equality. World War I was a
social catalyst for millions of Americans. African-Americans
had fought to make democracy and self-determination a
reality throughout the world. In light of this contribution,
African-Americans now demanded to be treated as full
citizens.‘5

This demand for equality would be bolstered by an
indisputable wave of cultural productivity. This
productivity would be shaped by a new racial consciousness.
Part of this new consciousness was embracing the new “Jazz
Age.” Black musicians introduced the world to a new sound
which incorporated African and European musical elements.

Harlem soon became the center of this new jazz culture.

 

‘5Locke, The.NeV'Negro (New York: Charles Boni, 1925), 15.
“Huggins, Harlem Renaissance, 54-55.

28

The Harlem Renaissance also saw the development of
primitivism--an ideology which emphasized the “primitive” or
exotic aspects of black culture. Harlem Renaissance artists
sought to tap into the rural folkways of the black southern
past. They also sought to identify with Africa and the
African past although their knowledge of the continent was
somewhat limited. It was “through a cultural awakening
that this New Negro was to express himself.”‘7

Chicago Renaissance artists sought to express
themselves through a new social consciousness. The Chicago
Renaissance witnessed the emergence of a new social realism.
The Chicago School of black writers, led by Richard Wright,
included Chicago natives Gwendolyn Brooks and William
Attaway as well as Margaret Walker, Willard Motley and Arna
Bontemps, a veteran of the Harlem Renaissance. They “wrote
extensively about the Great Migration and how it transformed
the black community.“8 Chicago Renaissance artists
described, in sometimes vivid detail, the pathology that
emerged following that migration. Confronted with the
devastation of the Great Depression, Chicago School writers
began to rethink the nature of African-American literature.
They felt that as artists, they had a social and political

obligation to present a “realistic” portrait of the black

 

‘7Huggins, Harlem Renaissance, 60.
‘aRobert Bone, “Richard‘wright and the Chicago Renaissance,”
callaloo (Summer 1986): 466-467.

29

experience in America.

In order to achieve this portrait, it was crucial that
black artists were accountable to themselves and to the
black community. Instead of being “contributors” to the
development of American civilization, these artists would be
contributors of a new understanding of the social,
historical, and cultural dynamics of the black experience.

Similar to its predecessor, the Harlem Renaissance, the
Chicago Renaissance was not limited to literary activity.
Music was an essential element of any black cultural
activity. Although the decade of the Harlem Renaissance has
been documented as the “Jazz Age,” the 1930's saw “the
nurturing of a distinct jazz culture on the South Side of
Chicago.”‘9 Jazz great Duke Ellington arrived in Chicago in
1930 to find a “glittering” community with a lively night
life.50 Louis Armstrong also passed through Chicago and
helped to lay a foundation for a rich musical legacy.
Darlene Clark Hine makes this statement:

The South Side was the beating heart of the city's
Jazz Age. Chicago did not replace New York as the
major location for the aspiring jazz musician. It
remained make a name for yourself.51

Another facet of this musical legacy was the

development of gospel music. Chicago’s Thomas Dorsey was

 

‘9Hine, Hine, Harrold, The.African<American Odyssey, 456.
5° Ibid.
“fluid.

30

“one of the nation's leading composers of the blues
throughout the 1920's.”52 During the 1930's, Dorsey proved
himself an innovator when “he synthesized elements of the
blues with religious hymns.”53 The result was a new black
urban gospel. Through relentless touring and promotion,
Dorsey not only won individual acclaim but helped to bring
gospel music to national prominence. Dorsey was aided in his
campaign by Chicago-based performer Mahalia Jackson, who is
considered by many to be one of the greatest gospel singers
in American history.54

While Chicago-based gospel music was making inroads
onto the national scene, a small black dance company was
attempting to establish itself within the concert dance
world. The company's founder was Katherine Dunham, a gifted
choreographer and anthropologist who sought to create an
institution for blacks to study dance.55 With the support of
the WPA, Dunham's Negro Dance Group survived and flourished
throughout the 1930's and 1940’s.

Dunham shared with her peers in the artistic community
a commitment to socially relevant issues. She risked her
career on several occasions when she spoke out against Jim

Crow.56 Dunham’s actions spoke to the new school of social

 

52116161., 457.
”mm.
S‘Ibid.
551nm.
561bid., 458.

31

realism which shaped the 1930's and the Chicago Renaissance.

Like their literary counterparts, Chicago Renaissance
visual artists sought to portray the “real lives” of the
common people. Chicago artists, such as Charles White,
Elizabeth Catlett, and Eldzier Cortor, and Harlem’s Jacob
Lawrence “celebrated both rural and urban working-class
black people while implicitly criticizing the racial
hierarchy of power and privilege.”57

Richard Wright was at the forefront of this new Chicago
school of artists. He envisioned a group of black writers
who would “render the life of their race in social and
realistic terms.”58 It was early 1936 and Wright was reeling
from the demise of the John Reed Clubs. The John Reed Clubs
were crucial to Wright’s life and career because it was
through the clubs that Wright was introduced to the
Communist party. The clubs also provided him with one of the
first opportunities to explore and make public his creative
endeavors.

The John Reed Clubs had been organized at a national
conference in Chicago in May of 1932. Closely controlled by
the Communist party, “the clubs were designed to serve as

one of its cultural instruments” with the goals of “making

the club a functioning center of proletarian culture” and

 

57Ibid. , 459.
5&Richard‘wright, “Negroes Launch Literary Quarterly,” Daily
worker (June 8, 1937): 7.

32

“creating and publishing art and literature of a proletarian
character.”59

Wright was introduced to the clubs by friends from the
post office in the fall of 1933. His activities increased
quickly soon after he joined. In 1934, “he was elected
executive secretary of the Chicago branch, and in March of
that year, he spoke to the John Reed Club of Indianapolis.
Soon afterward he joined the Communist party.”60 The party
came to provide “an intellectual framework and an emotional
home for Wright during the next decade.”61

Unfortunately, as Wright's activities increased, the
Communist party decided to dissolve the clubs. This was
because the party felt that it needed more influential
representatives to advance the popular front. Since club
members were not sufficiently well-known to serve party
propaganda purposes, a national organization restricted to
noted writers and artists would replace them.62

The American Writers’ Congress opened in New York on
April 26, 1935. Wright, along with thirty-eight others, was
elected to the national council of the League of American
Writers on the last day of the congress. The league replaced

the John Reed clubs and Wright “remained a faithful member

 

59K’eneth Kinnamon, The Emergence of'Richard wright (Chicago:
University of Illinois Press, 1972), 50—51.

6°1bid., 60-61.

5115161., 62.

6211mm, 62-64.

33

of the league until his break with the Communist party
itself.”
In February of 1936, Wright attended the first National
Negro Congress in Chicago. He was sent there by the
Communist party which had organized the gathering. Here, he
met the poet Frank Marshall Davis. Soon afterwards, “Wright
introduced himself to playwright Theodore Ward and the two
cooperated in forming a discussion group of black writers,
most of whom were associated with the Federal Writers'
Project.”63
The South Side Writers’ Group began in April 1936. The
group was “an outgrowth of the National Negro Congress” and
its first meeting was held in the South Parkway home of poet
Bob Davis.6‘ Margaret Walker provides this interesting
account of that meeting:
When I arrived at the address given on the card, I
discovered I was very late. I heard a man
expounding on the sad state of Negro writing at
that point in the thirties, and he was punctuating
his remarks with pungent epithets. I drew back in
Sunday-school horror, totally shocked by his
strong speech, but I steeled myself to hear him
out. The man was Richard Wright.65

Walker goes on to say that Wright was “the leader, a kind of

catalyst and exciting hot center of that group.”66 In

addition to Ward and Davis, the group consisted of Edward

 

53Ibid., 66.
6‘Walker, Daemonic Genius, 71.
‘5Ibid., 72.
“Ibid., 73.

34

Bland, Russell Marshall, Fern Gayden, Dorothy Sutton, Marian
Minus, Theodore Bland, Julius Weil, Banfield Gordon, Arna
Bontemps, as well as other “less talented beginners.”67

The second meeting took place at the Lincoln Center on
Oakwood Boulevard. Margaret Walker read a group of her poems
and received a favorable reception. Wright also read a piece
of prose in progress. Arna Bontemps was later introduced to

the club.“8

In article of the June 8, 1937 issue of Daily Worker,
Wright recalled the agenda of a new generation of black

writers:

Following the National Negro Congress in Chicago,
a year ago, a group of writers...formed the first
group whose aim was to render the life of their
race in social and realistic terms. For the first
time in Negro history, problems such as
nationalism in literary perspective, the relation
of the Negro writer to politics and social
movements were formulated and discussed.69

And one year earlier, Wright said this:

There are young writers and artists in Chicago who
stand clear of the mire...The job is a big one, it
is nothing less than the task of building our own
organs of expression, mobilizing our own
audiences, maintaining our own critical standards,
and nursing and developing our own talent. And the
beginning of such a movement has already

started. 0

As Margaret Walker asserts, Wright's sociopolitical

 

‘7Ibid., 77.

591516., 74.

69wright, “Negroes Launch Literary Quarterly)” 7.
7“wright, “In Defense onMeyer Levin,” Poetry (June 1936):
3.

35

orientation “began in Chicago and it was this orientation
that he passed on to the members of the South Side Writers’
Group. This political direction Wright expressed was rooted
in black nationalism.”1 The issues raised at the South Side
Writers' Group meetings would be the issues central to
Wright's 1937 essay “Blueprint for Negro Writing.”

During the weekly meetings of the group, Wright would
ask group members to bring at least one piece of writing to
read aloud to the group. Margaret Walker recalls that most
members were very reluctant to comply at first. In addition
to the early draft of “Blueprint,” Wright read stories that
would appear in Uhcle Tom’s Children.72

In November of 1936, Wright achieved his first real
success in fiction with the publication of the short story
“Big Boy Leaves Home.” He was now a professional writer and
pursued his career in New York. He arrived in New York in
May 1937 and would attend the second American Writers'
Congress the following month. He later moved to Harlem and
became immersed in various forms of writing. On crucial
project was an ambitious literary magazine entitled New
Challenge.

Although Wright had moved to New York City, he remained

the leader of the South Side Writers' Group. He sought to

 

71walker, Deemonic Genius, 77.
"Ibid. , 72 .

36

create an organ for the group with the publication of New
Challenge. New Challenge was actually a revival of a
magazine created by Dorothy West in 1934 called Challenge.
Its purpose was to “revive the spirit of the Harlem
Renaissance.”73
According to Michel Fabre, the new magazine was
part of a rather belated Party effort to unite the
literary elements of the Left, but considering the
brief career of Left Front and the almost
immediate failure of Midwest, there was no telling
whether New Challenge would finally realize
Wright’s dream of bringing together a group of
progressive black authors.
Dorothy West was the editor of the new magazine but “Wright
was ultimately responsible for the radical orientation of
the publication.”75 Keneth Kinnamon asserts that “West
compromised her stylistic standards in order to encourage
young writers.”76 However, she was eager to print “competent
social protest material.” Wright and his Chicago group
shared her aspirations and “Wright's correspondence with
Margaret Walker reveals that he eventually did most of the
work for the publication and made almost all of the
”77

editorial decisions.

Kinnamon postulates that the editorial emphasis of the

 

73Kinnamon, The Emergence of Richard wright, 68-69.
"Michel Fabre, The Unfinished Quest of Richard Wright (New
York:‘William.Mbrrow and Company, 1973), 142.

75mm.

75Kinnamon, The Ehergence of'Richard wright, 69.

77Fabre, The unfinished Quest of Richard wright, 142.

37

magazine indicated a general shift in African-American
writing from “the exotic bohemianism of the Harlem
Renaissance to the social consciousness of Wright and other
WPA writers.”78 Wright's WPA associates included Margaret
Walker, Frank Yerby, Willard Motley, Robert Hayden, Frank
Marshall Davis, Theodore Ward, and William Attaway.

As mentioned earlier, Wright announced the launching of
the magazine in an article for the Daily Worker. Wright
described the South Side Writers’ Group and its exploration
of the relationship between folk tradition and literature.
He also discussed at length his essay “Blueprint for Negro
Writing,” which appeared in the first issue of the magazine.
In the essay, Wright presents a scathing critique of the
traditional trends of black writing which he characterized
as pandering to a white audience. He also contends that
black writers ignored the concerns of black people and in
turn, ignored the collective consciousness embodied in
black folklore. Ultimately, Wright concluded that social
consciousness and responsibility should be the guiding
factors for black writers.

In November of 1937, New Challenge debuted; “almost two
months behind schedule.”79 The contents came from friends or

acquaintances of Wright's. They included poems by Frank

 

7°Kinnamen, The.Emergence of'Richard wright, 69.
”Fabre, The Unfinished Quest of Richard Wright, 145.

38

Marshall Davis and articles by Sterling Brown, Robert
Hayden, and Alain Locke. It also contained one of the first
literary efforts by Ralph Ellison.80 In Wright's
absence, Margaret Walker “became the most active member of
the South Side Writers’ Group.”81 She “obtained
subscriptions for New Challenge, did research for Wright and
kept him informed of current events through frequent
correspondence.”82 Unfortunately, the subscriptions Walker
received for the magazine were not enough to keep it in
circulation after the first issue. In addition to the
absence of regular subscribers, “the magazine had no
advertising nor an assured audience.”83

The demise of New Challenge seemed to foreshadow the
fate of the South Side Writers’ Group. According to Margaret
Walker’s account of events, she was at the center of a major
controversy involving Wright and members of the group.
Walker “was accused by Theodore Ward of breaking up
friendships in Chicago between Wright and all the members of
the South Side Writers’ Group.”8‘ She was also accused of
“having designs” on Wright; manipulating and controlling

him.85 She was told that “she prevented Ward's play from

 

°°Ibid.

81Ihid.

“Ibid.

83Ihid., 146.

8‘Walker, Daemonic Genius, 143.
85Ibid.

39

being published in New Challenge.”86 One of the most
sensitive and volatile accusations was that she created and
then spread the rumor that Ward and Langston Hughes had a

sexual relationship.87

Michel Fabre makes an intriguing observation in his
biography of Wright:

As far as he[Wright] was concerned, she[Walker]
was a devoted friend with deep feelings for him,
but in her frankness, she apparently committed
indiscretions which almost lost Wright some of his
friends in Chicago, with the result that her
visit, which could have been a happy reunion, in
factagarked the date when Wright withdrew from
her.

And Walker offered this thought on the situation:
Years would pass before I let the thought pass my
mind that both Wright and I had been set up by
Ted. I knew his motivations were jealousy,
ambition, and open malice but it never occurred to
me that people would go to such lengths to destroy
a friendship nor that close ties of friendship
could be so easily broken.89

By the fall of 1938, the South Side Writers' Group had

dissipated. Apparently, rumors, accusations, and innuendoes

created tension and rifts among group members.

The South Side Writers' Group was one facet of a
multifaceted vision that Wright had for transforming

African-American literature and African-American cultural

expression in general. Creating an organization was a

 

“151d.
°7Ibid.

88Fabre, unfinished Quest of'Richard wright, 195.
89Walker, Daemonic Genius, 143.

40

crucial step in the process of making radical changes to an

existing form of creative expression.

41

CHAPTER TWO
REVISING THF PARADIGM: RICHARD WRIGHT'S THEORETICAL
ARGUMENTS
I

The Chicago Renaissance signified a transition in black
cultural expression; Richard Wright was a facilitator of
this transition. Wright sought to transform the nature of
black writing in America. He implored and instructed black
artists to look to themselves, to their community, and to
their folk heritage for their art. Through this process, he
argued, a new social consciousness would emerge, exemplified
in a new social realism, the social realism that was central
to the Chicago Renaissance.

In 1937, Wright published what Michel Fabre called “the
most complete, coherent and profound statement of Wright’s
theories of.Afro-American writing.”1 “Blueprint for Negro
Writing” signifies an ideological shift from the “art for
art’s sake” thinking of the Harlem Renaissance to a new

racial and social consciousness. Informed greatly by black

 

1Michel Fabre , The Unfinished Quest of Richard Wright (New
York:‘William Marrow and Company, 1973), 143.

42

nationalism and Marxism, the essay was Wright's effort to
articulate a new aesthetic that would speak directly to the
masses of African—Americans.

Wright's ideas have been discussed in numerous
biographies. Eugene Miller has provided an insightful study
of these ideas in his work Voice of a Native Son: The
Poetics of Richard Wright. However, these studies have not
provided a close examination of “Blueprint” itself. The
essay is divided into ten parts which detail Wright's
theories. The opening section, entitled “The Role of Negro
Writing: Two Definitions,” chronicles the history of black
writing in America. Wright postulates that black writing
has “been confined to humble novels, poems and plays” in
which black writers have begged white America for
recognition, acceptance, and respect. However, their efforts
were in vain for white America never took them seriously as
artists.

When white America did recognize black writing, it was
an “accident.” Wright dismisses the literature of the Harlem
Renaissance as “the fruits of that foul soil which was the
result of a liaison between inferiority-complexed Negro
‘geniuses' and burnt-out white Bohemians with money.”

Wright moves on to discuss the role of black writing
within the black community. He characterizes black writing

as being “something external to the lives of educated

43

Negroes themselves.” In the concluding paragraph of the
section, Wright states his two part thesis-— “(1) the best
of black writing rarely addressed the needs, sufferings, and
aspirations of black people themselves and (2) the
recognition of this fact places the whole question of Negro
writing in a new light and raises a doubt as to the validity
of its present direction.”

The next section of the essay describes what Wright
calls “The Minority Outlook.” Here Wright invokes Lenin in
his arguments about the “unique minority position” of black
creative writers. Wright opens the section by pointing out
Lenin's observation that “oppressed minorities often reflect
the techniques of the bourgeoisie more brilliantly than some
sections of the bourgeoisie themselves.” This is the mistake
that black writers have been making over the years,
according to Wright.

In order to correct this problem, asserts Wright, black
writers need to align themselves with black workers:

The Negro workers, propelled by the harsh
conditions their lives, have demonstrated
this consciousness and mobility for economic
and political action there can be no doubt.
But has this consciousness been reflected
the work of Negro writers to the same degree
as it has in the Negro workers’ struggle to
free Hendon and the Scottsboro Boys, in the
drive toward unionism, in the fight against
lynching? Have they as creative writers taken
advantage of their unique minority position?
The answer decidedly is no. Negro writers

have lagged sadly, and as time passes the gap
widens between them and their people. An emphasis

44

upon tendency and experiment, a view of society as
something becoming rather than as something fixed
and admired is the one which points the way for
Negro writers to stand shoulder to shoulder with
Negro workers in mood and outlook.
Black writers need to catch up with black workers in this
sense. Black writers also need to adopt an “attitude of self
consciousness and self-criticism,” Wright says, which must
come through an understanding of black culture. This
culture, according to Wright, “stems mainly from two
sources: (1) the black church and (2) black folklore.”

The black church proved crucial to African-Americans
during their struggle for human rights between 1820-1860.
This struggle was revolutionary until, Wright says,
“religion began to serve as an antidote for suffering and
denial.” Wright ultimately expresses great disappointment
with religion and the black church when he insists that the
“archaic morphology of Christian salvation” became the only
sense of a whole universe.

Wright has a different perspective on black folklore,
however. He characterizes black folklore as the “most
indigenous and complete expression” of the American Negro:

Blues, spirituals, and folk tales recounted from
mouth to mouth; the whispered words of a black
mother to her black daughter on the ways of men;
the confidential wisdom of a black father to his
black son; the swapping of sex experiences on
street corners from boy to boy in the deepest
vernacular; work songs sung under blazing
suns-—all these formed the channels

through which the racial wisdom flowed. One
would have thought that Negro writers in the last

45

century of striving at expression would have
continued and deepened this folk tradition, would
have tried to create a more intimate and yet a
more profoundly social system of artistic
communication between them and their people. But
the illusion that they could escape through
individual achievement the harsh lot of their
race swung Negro writers away from any such path.
As a result of black writers “straying” from this path, two
separate cultures emerged: one, unwritten and recognized,
for the black masses and another, “parasitic and mannered,”
for the Negro bourgeoisie. Because black writers have lost a
certain consciousness, which is embedded in the life
experiences of the black masses.

This racial consciousness is a crucial issue in the
next two sections of the essay which deal with black
nationalism. Wright asserts that black nationalism is an
intrinsic and unavoidable aspect of the black experience in
.America: “psychologically, this nationalism is reflected in
the whole of Negro culture, and especially in folklore.”
This folklore “embodies the memories and hope of a struggle
for freedom in the absence of fixed and nourishing forms of
culture.” It also “contains the collective sense of Negro
life in America.”

The nationalism Wright sees in black folklore is also
‘finanifest in the social institutions of black people.”
According to Wright:

There is a Negro church, a Negro press, a Negro

social world, a Negro sporting world, a Negro
business world,a Negro school system, Negro

46

professions; in short, a Negro way of life in
America. The Negro people did not ask for this,
and deep down, though they express

themselves through their institutions and adhere
to this special way of life, they do not want it
now. This special existence was forced upon them
from without by lynch rope, bayonet and mob rule.
They accepted these negative conditions with the
inevitability of a tree which must live or perish
in whatever soil it finds itself.

In order for black writers to mold or influence the

consciousness of black people, they must speak directly to

the people through this “warping way of life.” Wright goes

on to say how black writers should address black

nationalism:

Negro writers must accept the nationalist
implications of their lives, not in order to
encourage them, but in order to change and
transcend them. They must accept the concept of
nationalism because, in order to transcend it they
must possess and understand it.

And a nationalist spirit in Negro writing means a
nationalism carrying the highest possible pitch of
social consciousness. It means a nationalism that
knows its origins, its limitations; that is aware
of the dangers of its position; that knows its
ultimate aims are unrealizable within the
framework of capitalist America; a nationalism
whose reason for being lies in the simple fact of
self-possession and in the consciousness of the
interdependence of people in modern society.

Ironically, as Wright instructs black writers to accept

kiLack nationalism, he also makes a case for Marxism. Wright

punesses young writers to adopt a Marxist analysis and

vision:

Many young writers have grown to believe that a
Marxist analysis of society presents such a
picture. It creates a picture which, when placed
before the eyes of the writer, should unify his

47

personality, organize his emotions, butters him
with a tense and obdurate will to change the
world. And in turn, this changed world will
dialectically change the writer. Hence, it is
through a Marxist conception of reality and
society that the maximum degree of freedom in
thought and feeling can be gained for the Negro
writer. Further, this dramatic Marxist vision,
when consciously grasped, endows the writer with a
sense of dignity which no other vision can give.
Ultimately, it restores to the writer his lost
heritage, that is, his role as a creator of the
world in which he lives, and as a creator of
himself.

A Marxist analysis would expose the horrors and injustices
of capitalism. Once black writers are able to “see” these
horrors and injustices, they would no longer be controlled
and manipulated by them. This would, in turn, free them to
present a more “clear” vision of the black experience. This
presentation “should be simple but not simplistic.” It
should “contain all the complexity, the strangeness, the
‘magic wonder' of life.”
In the next section, Wright moves on to address the
“Problem of Perspective.” He defines “perspective” as:
that part of a poem, novel, or play which a writer
never puts directly upon paper. It is that fixed
point in intellectual space where a writer stands
to view the struggles, hopes, and sufferings of
his people. There are times when he may stand too
close and the result is a blurred vision. Or he
may stand too far away and the result is a neglect
of important things.
Perspective also means that:
a Negro writer must learn to view the life of a
Negro living in New York's Harlem or Chicago's

South Side with the consciousness that one—sixth
of the earth's surface belongs to the working

48

class. It means that a Negro writer must create in
his readers' minds a relationship between a Negro
woman hoeing cotton in the South and the men who
loll in swivel chairs in Wall Street and take the
fruits of her toil.
But a black writer’s sole concern should not be “rendering
the social scene.” Black writers should embrace all of the
social, political, and economic aspects of the black
experience. Wright speaks of the “whole life and culture” of
African-Americans. The black experience should be approached
from numerous angles with no limitation on technical and
stylistic freedom.

This approach is crucial in the depiction of a “new
reality,” and requires a “greater consciousness and
discipline than was necessary for the so-called Harlem
school of expression.” Wright urges black writers to “seek
through the medium of their craft to play as meaningful a
role in the affairs of men as do other professionals,” to
serve as a social force or entity within the black
community. But Wright also warns that black writers should
not try to take on too much responsibility, for if they
attempt to perform the social office of other professions,
“then autonomy of craft is lost and writing becomes
detrimentally fused with other interests.”

The concluding section of the essay discusses “The

Necessity for Collective Work.” Wright opens the section by

describing the isolation of the black writer, isolation

49

among black writers and isolation between black and white
writers. This isolation exists because of years of
segregation and exclusion. Wright offers a two-prong
solution to this problem: “(1) the ideological unity of
black writers and (2) an alliance of that unity with all the
progressive ideas of the day.” This, he says, “is the
prerequisite for collective work.” By placing cultural
health above “narrow sectional prejudices,” liberal writers
of all races could “help to break the stony soil of
aggrandizement out of which the stunted plants of Negro
nationalism grow.” Simultaneously, black writers could “help
weed out these choking growths of reactionary nationalism
and replace them with hardier and sturdier types.”2
II

“Blueprint for Negro Writing” is a synthesis of
numerous theories that Wright collected and absorbed as part
of his own intellectual development. Wright’s ideas were
informed by several factors: (1) his personal background,
(2) his reading of American and European writers and
thinkers, and (3) the influence and impact of the Communist
party.

According to Margaret Walker, during Wright's five

years in Jackson, Mississippi, between the age of twelve and

 

zAll direct quotes, summarizing, and paraphrasing are from
‘the essay “Blueprint for Negro‘writing.” New Challenge (Fall
‘1937): 53-65.

50

seventeen, he “solidified his antagonism not only toward
organized Christian religion but toward black bourgeois
aspirations.”3 He described this period vividly in Black
Boy. His most profound memories focus on his grandmother
Margaret Wilson’s “fanaticism” as a member of the Seventh
Day Adventist Church. Margaret Walker calls Wilson and
Wright’s aunts “religious fanatics who sublimated fear, sex,
and hatred of the world around them into their religion.”‘
Bible reading and praying were daily occupations and long
prayers were said morning and night. The Bible was
constantly quoted and “Wright was told early that nothing
good would come of him.”5
Wright “was bewildered and frightened by the strict
fanaticism of his grandmother's house.”6 As years passed,
his confusion turned to rage. He became wary and “learned
how to avoid whippings by keeping his activities to
himself.”7 In Black Boy, Wright says he attempted to
compromise when he confessed belief in his grandmother’s
religion and submitted to baptism but afterwards, according
to Margaret Walker, he “hardened himself against his family”

and “he was determined to be himself, even pitted against

 

3Margaret‘walker, Richard wright: Daemonic Genius (New York:
warner Books, 1988), 35.

‘Ihid. , 33.

5Ibid. , 34.

51bid.

71bid.

51

his grandmother, her unmerciful God, and the devil
himself.”8

But, although enraged and repulsed by his grandmother's
attitude and behavior, Wright was also fascinated by another
aspect of her personality and outlook. According to Eugene
Miller in Voice of a Native Son: The Poetics of Richard
wright, Wright felt that his grandmother was motivated by
“something that lay behind her obvious and pervasive
religious consciousness.”9

The “something” that Wright describes in his
unpublished essay “Memories of My Grandmother” he also found
in the blues and other forms of black expression, an
emotional atmosphere that gave these forms of expression
meaning. It was “something in the spontaneous black American
‘folk psyche' which Wright saw as a defining characteristic
of.African-American thought and emotional processes.”10 This
“something” that “lay behind Wright's grandmother’s attitude
toward life and the attitude of black folks in general was
crucial to his goal as a creative artist;” to produce, as he
described it in American Hanger, a “vast, delicate,
intricate, and psychological structure” and “write of

the people in his own environment,” to achieve a level of

 

albid.

9Eugene Miller, Vbice of'a Native son: The Poetics of
Richard wright (Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of
Nfississippi, 1990), 6.

1°1hid.

52

expression that captured a “physical state or movement that
carried a strong subjective impression.”11
His grandmother had it-- “something” that “enabled her

to give a reality to the world she created.”12 This was the

reality he strove to give his works:
I strove to master words, to make them disappear,
to make them important by making them new, to make
them melt into a rising spirit of emotional
stimuli, each greater than the other, and all
ending in an emotional climax that would drench
the reader with a new world.13

Eugene Miller asserts that this passage, “read with

knowledge of his grandmother's influence on his poetic

development, underscores religious ritual as the analog of

his ideal of literary activity.”1‘

Wright gave the “something” that he discovered in his
grandmother numerous labels throughout his career-- “black
power,” “a primal attitude,” a “curtain,” or “paganism.”
Eugene Miller refers to it as a “fluid, intense feeling at
the center of human mental life which provides the
touchstone of reality.”15

Wright first began his exploration of this “feeling”

mentioned above in his earliest published works

“Superstition” and “Big Boy Leaves Home.” “Big Boy Leaves

 

11mid. , 7.

”mm.

13wright, American HUnger (New York: Harper and Row, 1977),
21-22.

1‘Miller, Voice of a Native Son, 8.

15Ihid., 22.

53

Home,” a lynching story dealing with Southern racism and
race relations, is, as Margaret Walker observed, “saturated
with black folklife--folk speech, folk action, and folk
ways.”16 In the story, “violence and tragedy are inevitable,
implacable, and absolute.17 The story is “stark realism,” a
copy of real life horror that is authentic.

According to Eugene Miller, Wright’s poetics are found
in a “structure of mythic overlay-~projecting one set of
events or constructs against another,” a structure, it can
be argued, he derived from the folk expression he had
absorbed during his childhood, another version of his
grandmother’s penchant for “yoking disparate things
together in some overruling ‘mood' that gives these elements
their meaning.”18

The years Wright spent with his grandmother in Jackson,
Mississippi also saw the emergence of his class
consciousness. The black social and business worlds of the
South were tightly knit enclaves of segregation led by
members of the black elite.19 Wright was excluded and
alienated from this elite by poverty. This poverty also

helped to shape “deep resentments and early complexes.”2°

In Black Boy Wright describes an incident that

 

1‘W'alker, Daemonic Genius, 82.
17Ibid. , 83 .

1”Miller, Vbice of’a Native Son, 60.
19Wa1ker , 35 .

2°Ibid.

54

indicates his “contempt and repugnance” for the black
bourgeoisie:
I had to make up my mind quickly; I was faced with
a matter of principle. I wanted to graduate, but I
did not want to make a public speech that was not
my own. “Professor, I'm going to say my own speech
that night...He grew angry...I went home, hurt but
determined. I had been talking to a “bought” man
and he had tried to “buy” me. I felt that I had
been dealing with something unclean.21
Margaret Walker contends that Wright “grew to believe that
educated black people with middle-class aspirations were
disdainful.”22
Wright's experiences with the black bourgeoisie as well
as his family and Southern whites caused him to turn away
from Jackson, Mississippi and look toward the North, a.k.a.
the “Promised Land.” At the age of seventeen, Wright took
the money he had been saving over the years and ran from his
Mississippi home. He ended up in Memphis, Tennessee where he
found work at an optical company. Memphis came to “serve as
a kind of a way station or halfway house for Wright, between
the rural South and the urban North.”23
It was in Memphis that Wright discovered H.L. Mencken.
In a copy of Commercial Appeal, Wright ran across an article

that scorned the social critic.24 Wright “wondered what on

Earth this Mencken had done to call down upon him the scorn

 

21Wright, Black Boy, 193—195.
22Walker, 36.

23we1ker, Daemonic Genius, 4o.
2‘Wright, Black Bay, 267.

55

of the South” and “set out to learn more about the man.”25
Wright obtained two books by Mencken--A Book of
Prefaces and Prejudices. As he read, he says, he was “jarred

and shocked” by Mencken's style:

Why did he write like that? And how did one write

like that? I pictured the man as a raging demon,

slashing with his pen, consumed with hat

denouncing everything American, extolling

everything European or German, laughing at the

weakness of people, mocking God, authority.2§
At one point, Wright was so moved by what he read that he
“stood up, trying to realize what reality lay behind the
meaning of the words.”27 His reading “made him aware of the
inadequacy of his formal education” and he “developed a
mixed feeling of inferiority and awesome respect for the
printed word.”28

Wright's intellectual development began in Memphis. He

was running away from a South which had oppressed him and
other blacks in numerous ways. Although he never
internalized or accepted the racism that plagued him, he was
“permanently scarred with a psychic wound of racism” and “he
would carry the South with him everywhere he went: the
nightmare of lynching, the trauma of Jim Crow, and the

:psychological fear and intimidation of white oppression and

*violence.”29lMargaret Walker provides keen insight into the

 

25Ibid., 267.

26Ibid., 270-271.

2"Ibid., 271.

28Walker, Daemonic Genius, 41.

56

connection between Wright’s personal background and his art

with this observation:

I am convinced that the best of Richard Wright's
fiction grew out of the first nineteen years of
his life. All he ever wrote of great strength and
terrifying beauty must be understood in this
light. His subjects and themes, his folk
references and history, his characters and places
come from the interest in violence, lynching,
rape, and murder goes back to the twilight of a

Southern past.30

Wright left the south in November of 1927 and arrived
in Chicago later that year. He had “yearned to be in a place
where he could participate in a democracy; more
specifically, he wanted the right to vote.”31 This was the
cornerstone of living in a free society. The South that he
left behind would have surely consumed him physically,
emotionally, and psychologically. Political freedom was only
one of several reasons it was imperative for Wright to
“escape” his birthplace.

Wright's political development “moved in stages over
five years from 1927 until 1932.”32 In 1930, Wright was
vwarking in the Chicago post office, where he met his
.lifelong friend Abe Aaron, among other intellectuals and
reuiicals who contributed to his political education.

The Chicago post office proved to be crucial in

 

29Ibid., 42.
3°Ibid., 43.
311bid., 57.
32Ibid.

57

Wright’s personal and professional development. It was here
that “Wright made friends who would lead him to join the
John Reed Club and the Communist party” and in turn, “the
Communist party would be the place where Wright’s social
consciousness was raised to a new level and he became a
revolutionary.”33
During his affiliation with the John Reed Club, Wright
received his “political education.” After a “steady diet of
Communist propaganda, he absorbed a reading list of
recommended books” and was fascinated to learn that “there
were poor people all over the world, a working class of more
than black people, and that race as a stigma had an economic

base and a social purpose.”3‘ He read Marx’s Communist

.Manifesto and was intrigued. However, Marx's ideas proved
limited in terms of addressing the plight of black people in
.America. As a result, he began to read sociology,
jpsychology, and history. In American Hunger, he recalled his
lack of the general theoretical knowledge that would have
inistained his creative attempts:

Something was missing in my imaginative efforts:
my flights of imagination were too subjective, too
lacking in reference to social action. I hungered
for a grasp of the framework of contemporary
living, for a knowledge of the forms of life about
me for eyes to see the bony structure of
personality for theories to light up the shadows
of conduct.35

 

33Ibid. , 63.
34Ibid.

58

In addition to his extensive reading, Wright would
often observe and record various aspects of black life in
and around Chicago. After being laid off from a hospital,
Wright was assigned by the relief system to a South Side
youth club.36 It was here that he found a wealth of material
that would serve as the foundation for such works as Native
Son:

Each day black boys between the ages of eight and
twenty-five came to swim, draw and read. They were
a wild and homeless lot, culturally lost,
spiritually disinherited, candidates for the
clinics, morgues, prisons, reformatories, and the
electric chair of the state's death house. For
hours I listened to their talk of planes, women,
guns, politics, and crime. I kept pencil and paper
in my pocket to jot down their word-rhythms and
reactions. The Communists who doubted
my motives did not know these boys, twisted
dreams, their all too clear destinies; and I
doubted if I should ever be able to convey to them
the tragedy I saw here.37
Here, as Michel Fabre notes, “Wright was able to acquire the
social and psychological background that was later crucial
to the creation of Bigger Thomas, but also to share without
condemning the passions of the delinquents.”38

As Wright continued his reading and absorbing of

materials, he soon learned to analyze the plight black

people in Marxist terms:

It seemed to me that here at last in the realm of

 

35Wright, American Hunger, 23.

3“Kinnamon, The Emergence of Richard wright, 62.
3'7Wright, American Hunger, 100.

”Fabre, The Unfinished Quest of Richard Wright,108.

59

revolutionary expression was where Negro
experience could find a home, a functioning value
and role. Out of the magazines I read came a
passionate call for experiences of the
disinherited, and there were none of the same
lispings of the missionary in it.39
It was during this period that he found his voice as a poet.
He wrote:
Feeling for the first time that I could speak to
listening ears, I wrote a wild, crude poem in free
verse, coining images of black hands playing,
working, holding bayonets, stiffening finally in
death...I read it and felt that in a clumsy way
it linked white life with black, merged two
streams of common experience.
Wright was educated by friends in the party on professional
writing. He was taught “how to express himself, how to find
publishing outlets and an agent, and how to promote
himself.”‘1
Wright's intellectual and creative development
“coincided with the growth and development of American
naturalism” as he “wrote prose in the naturalistic
tradition” and “his use of the anti-hero and the subhuman
being characters was naturalistic.”‘2 It is also important
to note the significance of Wright’s being in Chicago during
this period. As Margaret Walker observes, “American

naturalism seems to have been born in the Midwest. So many

of its progenitors lived in Chicago it seemed made for that

 

39Wright, American Hunger, 134.
‘oIbid., 135.
‘lwalker, Daemonic Genius, 64.
“Ibid., 81.

60

city. "43
As Wright grew into his new home city, he expanded his
knowledge with an array of reading. As mentioned earlier, he
read across disciplines. This reading inevitably informed
his reading of literature and literary theory. In American
Hunger, Wright mentions his “accidental discovery” of
Gertrude Stein’s Three Lives on a library shelf. He also
speaks of the profound impact of Stein on his creative
development:
Repeatedly I took stabs at writing, but the
results were so poor I would tear up the sheets. I
was striving for a level of expression that
matched those of the novels I read. Under the
influence of Stein's Three Lives, I spent hours
and days pounding out disconnected sentences for
the sheer love of words.“
Wright was quite adamant about Stein’s “influence” on him as
an artist. However, Eugene Miller points out some
inconsistencies in Wright's account. After careful
examination, Miller concludes that “the extent to which
Wright used Stein’s stylization as a model for his own is at
best limited.”‘5.Miller also contends that Wright's efforts
to imitate Stein’s style “left few traces.”6

But Miller does admit that Stein's prose provided

Wright with “a kind of forest of Arden or Prospero’s island,

 

“mid. , 82.

“Wright,.American Hanger, 22.
“Miller, Voice of a Native Son, 65.
“Ibid.

61

functioning for him as Paris had done for American
expatriate writers and artists of the l920’s.”‘7 Wright
“seems to have felt that prose contained the deeply
attractive ‘something' that he found in his grandmother's
outlook. It was the something that he could never
fully explain but that led to some valuable, speculative
insights concerning African-American folk imagination.”8
Wright's discovery and exploration of this folk
imagination was part of an intellectual and creative
journey. When he arrived in Chicago in November 1927, Wright
was a “callow youth nineteen years old having only his
dreams and ambitions as baggage.”49 When he left ten years
later, he was a “mature man who possessed a keen social
perspective on the problems of black people, a political
animal who had become a radical and a Marxist, and most
importantly, he was a professional in the craft and art of
writing.”50
Wright certainly solidified his place as one of the
great American and African—American writers of his time. As
Margaret Walker asserts, “he must be remembered for a number

of reasons, and one of these is illustrated best in his

theories of creativity. His ideas changed as his

 

4" Ibid. , 62 .

“Ibid.

‘9walker, Daemonic Genius, 85.
5°Ihid.

62

philosophies changed. These changes can be seen in his
fiction. In his earliest stories, one sees the unconscious
schoolboy who is under the influences of but rebelling
against the fundamentalism of his grandmother's
fanatic religious beliefs.”51
In Chicago Wright experienced an awakening in his
social consciousness. Wright was evolving as an intellectual
and an artist. He was constantly searching for answers and
trying to understand himself, black culture, American
culture, and the world in general. He found many of the
answers to his questions through extensive self-education
and his involvement with the Communist party. This

intellectual journey culminated with the publication of

“Blueprint for Negro Writing” in 1937.

 

511bid. , 101.

63

CHAPTER THREE

THE APPRENTICE NOVEL: LAWD TODAY!

Richard Wright made his first attempt at a full-length
novel sometime between 1935 and 1937, about seven years
after he arrived in Chicago. This “apprentice” novel, Lawd

Today!, originally titled Cesspool was published
posthumously in 1963, and represented a significant and
continued effort for Wright. In the forward found in the
unexpurgated edition of Lawd Today!, Arnold Rampersad

speculates that early on publishers could have
possibly been repulsed by the extreme realism
and the saturation of sexual language and
situations of lust that Wright openly sets
forth.1 Rampersad further adds that the work's
four main characters are allowed to include white
women as objects and fantasies of their obsessive
sexual desire. This obsession unrelieved by the
slightest romantic element is recounted in
language and scenes of a frankness and even
crudeness seldom seen previously in America
literature.

He continues to say that perhaps
White editors might have believed, not without

reason, that the American reading public was
not ready for such renegade thoughts and

 

1Arnold Rampersad, in Richard‘wright, Lawd deay! (Boston:
Northeastern Univ. Press, 1963), vi.

64

undisciplined language on the part of blacks.2
Rampersad also speaks of Wright's sense of kinship with
major American realists and naturalists including Stephen
Crane and Frank Norris. He says that when Wright borrowed a
number of devices and techniques employed by Dos Passos who
included the graphic use of newspaper headlines and radio

announcements in his U.S.A. trilogy, he thereby gave Lawd

Today! a sense both of history and immediacy.3 He further
states that as a young writer's book, obviously the novel
sprang out of Wright's life and his particular experience as
a sensitive, highly intelligent black migrant hungry for

a sense of achievement and his trying to make his way

in the midst of the Depression in the black South of
Chicago.‘ On the whole, the novel has not received a great
deal of attention from critics. However, the handful of
critics who provide some crucial observations include
Russell Carl Brignano’s brief discussion of Lawd Today! in
his work Richard wright: An Introduction to the Man and His
Works. Brignano primarily focuses on Wright's depiction of
African-Americans and the 1930's Chicago environment. Edward
Margolies provides valuable insight into the novel in his
work The Art of Richard Wright. He analyzes the

dissolution of folk elements and discusses Wright’s literary

 

2mid. , vi.
3Ihid. , vii.
‘Ibid. , viii.

65

models--James T. Farrell, Theodore Dreiser, and John Dos
Passos as well as the psychology of Jake Jackson, the main
character.

Furthermore, as Michel Fabre observes, “For the first
time Wright was trying to transform, via dialogue and
description both his sociological knowledge and his own
experience.”5 Keneth Kinnamon discusses the novel in the
context of Wright as an emerging artist and points out
Wright’s failure to fuse the elements of folklore and the
numerous sociological themes. In addition, Kinnamon makes a
connection between Lawd Today! and “Blueprint for Negro
Writing”:

It is useful to approach Lawd Today! with
“Blueprint for Negro Writing” clearly in mind, for
the essay seems a clear statement of the novel's
intention. 5

For sure, that this novel stands for more than a black
migrant trying to make his way in the South Side of Chicago
during the Depression is evident when one discerns that
Richard Wright made certain that his work was “addressed to
the Negro himself, his needs, his sufferings, his
aspirations,” contrary to writers of the Harlem Renaissance

era who “were far better to others than they had been to

themselves”:

 

SMichel Fabre, The unfinished Quest of Richard wright (New
York:‘William.Marrow and Company, 1973), 86.

6Keneth Kinnamon , The Emergence of Richard wright (Chicago:
University of Illinois Press), 76.

66

Negro writing in the past has been confined

to . . . prim and decorous ambassadors who

went-a-begging to white America. They entered

the Court of American Public Opinion dressed in

the knee-pants of servility, curtsying to show

the Negro was not inferior, that he was human,

and that he had a life comparable to that of

other people.7
Wright continues when he says that for the most part, these
“artistic ambassadors' were received “as though they were
French poodles who do clever tricks.” And under these
conditions Negro writing was characterized by two aspects:
“a sort of ornamentation, the hallmark of ‘achievement' and
“ . . . the voice of the educated Negro pleading with white
America for justice.”8

To begin, Wright opens the novel with the first section

called “Commonplace” and chronicles the main character's
activities beginning with the time he awakens from a
disturbing dream in the morning until he goes to work in the
afternoon. The disturbing dream itself is quite revealing
as it speaks to the nature of this man, a prototype of the
Negro race. Edward Margolies says that the dream “not only
relates the futility of Jake Jackson's strivings--it is all

he could do . . . to remain in the same place--but announces

the theme of the book--the senselessness, the purposeless-

 

7Richard‘wright, “Blueprint for Negro writing,” In The
Nerton Anthology of AfricaneAmerican Literature, eds. Henry
Louis Gates,Jr. and.Nellie Y. MeKay (New York:'W$Wx Norton
Company, 1997), 1380.

8Ihid.

67

ness, the absurdity of his life” 9 And Wright, in Lawd

Today! tells that:
The steps blazed and shivered in a mist of bright

gold, as if about to vanish. Then they grew real
and solid.

He was flying up steps, but even at that the end
was not in sight. “What the hell? There's a
joke here somewhere! Damn tooting!’ He stopped,
sighed, wiped sweat from his forehead, and
looked to see how many steps he had covered. He
was right where he started!10
This is, therefore, the way it is as the reader observes
Jake Jackson as he eats breakfast, quarrels with and beats
his wife, looks over his mail, leaves his house to visit a
“policy parlor,” gets a haircut at “Doc Higgins' Tonsorial
Palace,” plays bridge with three fellow postal workers,
watches a street vendor selling quack medicine, eats lunch,
witnesses a black nationalist parade, and rides to work on
the elevated train.

The significance of this daily ritual, as observed by
Margolies, speaks to the emptiness and nothingness of Jake's
life. Wright, as “Negro” writer, informs the reader that the
“Negro way of life in America” was not asked for, but was

created by forced segregation:

This special existence was forced upon

 

9EdwardiMargolies, The Art of Richard wright (Carbondale:
Southern Illinois University Press, 1969) , 95.

10wright, Lawd deay! (Boston: Northeastern University
Press, 1963), 5.

68

them from without by lynch rope, bayonet
and mob rule. They accepted these
negative conditions with the inevitability
of a tree which must live or perish in
whatever soil it finds itself.11

Having migrated to Northern soil, Jake Jackson finds himself
constantly struggling to survive. One struggle that
continually plagues him is his battle with debts. Without
realizing that he is a victim of a ruthless money system,
Jake does know that “he owed so many debts he did not know
which debt to pay first.”12 He felt pressured that he would
have to pay for his wife’s operation and
Then there were other bills: the Furniture bill
and the rent bill and the gas bill and the light
bill and the bill at the Boston store and the
insurance bill and the milk bill.13
Jake's steady post office job appears to help very little,
and most of all
he is even more a slave to the values of the
civilization that exploits him. For Jake too
strives for what Wright has called elsewhere the
American lust for trash. He dreams of the
millionaire life. . . . He implicitly accepts
grafts as a political way of life--and expresses
no resentment that he must he must pay a bribe to
keep his job. Indeed, he rather admires the
people to whom he must pay his money.1‘

Another point Wright makes is that Jake is ashamed of

his blackness, and vividly describes Jake's “big job of the

 

11Wright, “Blueprint for Negro'Writing,” 1383.
12Wright,1.avd Today!, 19.

13Ibid., 20.

1‘Margolies,The.Art of Richard wright, 94.

69

morning.” The big job began when Jake combed his hair.

His nappy forelocks reared fanwise, . . . his

hair had to be combed, combed flat so that not a

ripple, not a crinkle, not a crease could show.15
Jake spent years dealing with this “foe” and had learned
devices of strategy to which Wright likens to the playing
out of a fierce battle that Jake always won. But in reality
Jake had not learned strategies that would save him from the
“malaise of being a Negro in America.”

When approaching Lawd Today! with “Blueprint” in mind,
the reader does so with a sense that the character of the
story have not yet reached a point in their existence where
their consciousness can be molded or influenced without
messages coming “through ideologies and attitudes fostered
in this warping way of life”, segregated channels.16
Because of this, the characters in Lawd Today! in many ways
live distorted and fragmented lives, detached somewhat if
not totally from all those things that make them whole and
connected solidly to their roots.

After observing Jake from the time he awakens from a
nightmarish dream to the time he rides with his friends on
the elevated train to work at the post office, Part One,
“Commonplace” ends. In Part Two, “Squirrel Cage”, Wright

describes each of Jake’s duties at the post office in

 

15wright,Lavd Today!, 23.
1'GW'right, ”Blueprint for Negro‘writing,” 1383.

70

detail, characterizing the dismal nature of Jake’s work.
Edward Margolies observes that this detailed description
brings further understanding of Jake’s psychology when he
contends that “part of the dull, heavy, perfunctory nature
of his choice is somehow mysteriously transferred to his
personality and outlook.”17
Jake's day in the squirrel cage begins with his facing
a review board because his wife has complained that he
viciously beat her once again. A telephone call from the
politically fluential barber Doc Higgins saves his job, but
not before he grovels in front of two white men and a
“Negro” who comprise the Board:
“Mr. Swanson, I'm a black man. You can see my
skin. I loves my race. I’m proud to be black.
wouldn’t do nothing on earth to drag my race
down, I ain’t the kind of man what would beat
his wife and stand her before you white
gentlemens.”18
When he is handed a resignation form in spite of this
begging, he begs even harder:
“I done worked hard all these years for the
government . I ain't bothered nobody. I’m just a
poor, hardworking black man. I ain’t got nothing
and Gawd knows I ain't never going to have
nothing. I was a good worker. Youall knows I
was. My life ain’t been no bed of ease. I done
had it hard all my day and I ain’t complained.
Now youall can have just a little mercy on me.

Just a little . . .Please, you all, give me on
more chance . . .Just one more . .’19

 

17Margolies, The.Art of'Richard wright, 93.
181.an Today! , 126 .
”mm.

71

Although Jake is “saved” by a telephone call from Doc
Higgins to whom he has to pay $150.00 in order for Doc to
“put in a good word” for him to the Post Master, he is not
saved from his own destructive behavior and warped
existence. He does however demonstrate how all of his
“energies are directed towards denying the reality of his
situation.”20 Just as he bitterly “hates and resents his
wife whom he regards as the source of all his difficulties
when she is . . . but another symptom of the malaise of
being a Negro in America,”21 he resents and hates that

he has to grovel in the presence of Howard, the “Negro”
member of the Board:

There’s that Gawddamn Nigger Howard. . . . He
would have to be here.

As a sense of shame spread over him, Jake thinks:
How can I talk to these white folk with that
nigger setting watching me? If I try to beg ‘em
to go easy on me, he’ll think I'm a Uncle Tom.
. . . He setting there at that desk just like
he’s a white man, Hell, he's the one who's a
Uncle Tom.22
As he leaves, “Howard's pitying smile caught his eye and
lingered on his mind, rankling, bitter.” Jake also “stopped
and stared, stared through the brick and steel walls of the
Post Office, stared all the way to the South Side of the

city where Lil was.”23.Acting in a “warped” manner, Jake

 

20Margolies, The Art of Richard Wright, 96.
21Ilhid.
22Wright, Lawd Today!, 122.

72

both denies and fails to accept responsibility for his own
destructive and irresponsible behavior and recognize
his plight as a “Negro in America.”

Another example of this manifestation is seen when Jake
and his friends attempt to lose sight of
themselves over games of cards, liquor, or women.
Or on other occasions they will surrender
themselves under the guise of good-natured
camaraderies, an orgy of self-hatred and race
depreciation by telling ‘nigger jokes.’2‘

On the other hand, Jake demonstrates that he is capable
of “moments of bitter lucidity, resentment, and self pity.
One of these moments occurs when he is yelled at and written
up by the inspector for placing mail in the wrong slots. He
tried desperately to contain his anger, but “Something
engulfed Jake and his head swam. He felt as he had felt
that morning when Lil had talked back to him” and he strikes
out by saying:

“How come you don't pick on some of them white
clerks? How come you always hopping on us
colored boys! Gawd-dammit I’m sick of this if
nobody else is . . . .”
Al, Slim, and Bob, his friends, attempt to calm Jake as the
inspector informs him that he will get two hundred demerits
because of his behavior. After the incident is over, Jake

says to his friends, “Whitefolks just want to ride a nigger

to death.” They respond by reminding him that there is

 

23Ibid., 127.
2‘Margoiies,The Art of Richard Wright, 96.

73

nothing he can do about being singled out that way. Jake
went back to his station and bent his head lower and threw
his mail faster, ”thinking all the while: “‘You sonofabitch!
It ain’t always going to be this way!'”25 Next his “mind
went abruptly blank because “he could not keep on with that
thought. Where could he go with it?” As Lewis Leary says:

He is what he is, what he was born to be, what he

has been made, and circumstance offers little

aid.”26

As “a result of an impoverishment of the spirit,”
according to Margolies, “Jake is incapable of transcending
the limitations of his environment. . . ."27 Margolies
points out that Jake does, however, possess heroic
possibilities but his “activities, strivings, ambitions are
shown to be petty, meaningless, and futile--matching somehow
the shallowness of [his] character.”28
Wright’s belief that the “Negro” writer must have

perspective can be applied to his character Jake. Jake does
indeed function in the South Side of Chicago with limited
and distorted awareness and consciousness; he is therefore
exemplary of an individual

destitute of a theory about the meaning, structure

and direction of modern society [and] is a lost
victim in a world he cannot understand or

 

25Lavd Today!, 142.

26Lewis Leary, “Lawd Today: Notes on Richard‘Wright's
First/Last Novel,” CIA Jeurnal, 15(JUne 1972), 411-20.
”Margolies, The Art of Richard Wright, 98.

2°Ibid., 98-99.

74

control.29
Jake does not have
that fixed point in intellectual space where [he]
stands to view struggles, hopes, and sufferings.
. . . There are times when {Jake} may stand
too close and the result is a blurred vision. Or
he may stand too far away and the result is a
neglect of important things.30
Wright would say that had Jake been aware that “the
life of a Negro living in New York’s Harlem or Chicago’s
South Side” is very much like the life of one sixth of the
working class people on this earth, perhaps he would have
been able to put his own life in perspective. This lack on
Jake’s part speaks to what Wright sees as a result of “being
transplanted from a ‘savage’ to a ‘civilized’ culture in
all of its social, political, economic, and emotional
implications.”31
Evidence of Jake’s blurred vision may be examined when
one looks at his views on “important things” that affect his
very existence. As Wright postulates, “oppressed
minorities often reflect the [views] of the bourgeoisie more
[fervently] than . . . the bourgeoisie themselves.” Jake,
assimilating white middle class values in hopes of elevating

himself into a higher social sphere, views communism as bad

and sees capitalism as getting lots of money quickly.

 

29Wright, “Blueprint for Negro'Writing,” 1385.
”mm.
”mm. , 1386.

75

Reading, according to Jake, addles the brain; and he is
thoroughly seduced by movies starring blue—eyed blondes and
darkly handsome menaces of golden-haired, white-thighed
womanhood. As for his own race, Jake believes that
“Niggers is just like a bunch of crawfish in a
bucket. When one of ‘em gets smart and
tried to climb out of the bucket, the others’ll
grab ‘im and pull'm back”32
Jake’s attitude toward reading is evident when he tells
his wife Lil that she will go blind from reading so much,
and when he sees a black boy reading a book, he thinks that
too much reading is bad, especially for young people. He
recalls the time when one of his schoolmates became “queer”
after trying to memorize the Bible. As a child he was told
by his grandmother that “too much reading addles your
brains, and if you addle your brains you’ll sure have
bookworms in the brain.”33
It is no surprise then that when he looks at the
library, he stares with curiosity. He had never been in a
library and thought that it was odd that there were so many
books. His lack of knowledge shows when he wonders what one
has to pay in order to get inside. He actually views it as
a place to come, eat a picnic lunch, look around, but it ver

occurs to him that he could read in this odd and curious

place. It is no surprise that when he sees the young white

 

32Lavd deay!, 69.
33Ihid.

76

boys with books, he speculates that they will “get
somewhere” and become “bigshots,” and “a nigger just stays a
nigger.”34
Furthermore, Jake’s blurred vision can be discerned
once again when one examines how Wright uses media materials
in the work. In the absence of “the whispered words,
confidential wisdom channels through which the racial wisdom
flowed”35 are “words on billboard movie marquees, newspaper
headlines, the words of popular songs, ‘throwaways,’ and
advertising leaflets advising Negroes new‘guaranteed’ ways
of discovering their lucky numbers, God, and various other
desirable goals.”36 Crudely written and vulgarly conceived
“this material is intended to exploit the very anxieties
and insecurities it promises to assuage.”37
Wright makes clear the absence of a racial folklore in
Jake’s life when Jake is awakened by the blaring radio:
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, JACK BASSETT SPEAKING!
STATION WGN, TRIBUNE SQUARE,CHICAGO AT THE
NEXT TONEBEAT THE TIME WILL BE EXACTLY EIGHT
O’CLOCK, CENTRAL STANDARD TIME . . . TING!
COURTESY THE NEVERSTOP WATCH COMPANY, LADIES
AND GENTLEMEN!
Another example of this notion is that Jake never fails to

read the daily newspaper where the headlines glare out at

him with words such as

 

34Ihid., 117.

35”Blueprint for Negro‘writing," 1382.
35Margolies, The Art of Richard Wright, 99.
”mm.

77

ROOSEVELT STRIKES OUT AT MONEY CHANGERS
WILL DRIVE THEM FROM THE TEMPLE, HE SAYS

and

GERMANY DEMANDS ARMS EQUALIY
VOWS TO BOLT LEAGUE IF DENIED.

We even see Lil, Jake’s wife, experiencing the same void as
she depends upon a booklet called “UNITY,” self described as
“A MAGAZINE DEVOTED TO CHRISTIAN HEALING” which and has a
caption underneath the picture Of a “haloed, bearded man
draped in white folds; the man’s hand was resting upon the
blond curls of a blueyed girl that reads

EVERY HOUR OF THE DAY AND NIGHT JESUS
FLOWS ALL THROUGH ME."38

Then there are the bundles of multicolored circulars and
advertisements that spill out into Jake’s hands when he
opens his mail box every day. Some of them read as follows:

BELIEVE IT OR NOT
a mountain of golden dollars wait for you
$$$$$$ A SURE HIT $$$$$$ A BULL’S EYE BARGAIN

$$$$$$ ACT NOW $$$$$$
RISK NOTHING---PAY AFTER YOU WIN

Another reads:
ASTONISHING$$$$$$ASTOUNDING$$$$$$
UNBELIEVABLE $$$$$$BUT TRUE
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN LEND ME YOUR EARS!!
I MAKE NUMBERS COME OUT OF ASHES--
I MAKE THE UNSEEN WORLD VISIBLE!! . . .
And still another:

VIM AND VIGOR AND VITALITY

 

3°Lavd deay!, 7.

78

FOR ALL MEN AND WOMEN . . .39

While the various forms of media are ubiquitous through
sound and the written word, Jake and his cronies do manage
to salvage a bit Of their southern folk elements. These
bits and snatches are found during some of their conver-
sations and thoughts. Remembering their reason for
migration from the South--to experience all aspects Of a
better life--they have all but forgotten their peasant
orientation. Sometimes these men speak of the harshness of
the South:

“You see the white folks try to make believe we

got the worst of [the race riot] SO’S we’ll be
scared...”

“Yeah, they doing everything to beat us down.”

I O. O O O O O O C O O O O O O.

“. . . and the white folks stoned a little black
boy and drowned ‘im ‘cause he was swimming in the
wrong part of the lake.”

“That’s as bad as killing a man for breathing.”

“You know, down South when a black man goes into a
white store to buy a cigar he has got to say:
‘Mister, please give me one Of them Mister John
Ruskin cigars’”4

Saying that they had to leave the South in order to escape

 

39Lavd deay, 172.
‘oIbid.

79

racism and slavish labor, they remember what they had to do

from “sunup to sundown, rain or shine”:

“. . .picking cotton ‘til your

back feels like it’s going to break
in two. . .”

“. . . and that sun so hot you

can’t even sweat. . . “

“and hoeing ‘til your hands blister. .
“. . .plowing. . .”

“...shucking corn. . .”

“. . .killing hogs. . .”

“. . .cooking molasses. . .”

“. . .hauling logs. . .”

“...laying them railroad ties. . .”
“...swing that hammer. . .”

“...to drive them hard, hard steel spike
“Gawd, when you think of all the work we
folks done . . .”

I,
o

8!”
black

“. . .and ain’t got a damn thing to Show for it

all. . .”
“. . .but bent backs and weak minds. .

II

“. . .you feel like going outdoors and looking up

at the sun and cussing Gawd!”1
Just as they remember the bad times, Jake and his
recount the good times too:

“There were some good days in the South.
“Yeah, in the summer. . .”

friends

II

“. . . when you didn’t have nothing to do but lay

in the sun and live.”

“Look like the South makes a man feel 1i
millionaire!”
“I use to go swimming in the creek. . .”

ke a

“Fishing’s what I love! Seems like I can smell

them catfish frying right now!”42

Their remembering the “good times” in the South continues as

they Speak of Magnolia blossoms, sunflowers and sweet honey

 

“Ibid. , 176.
‘zIbid. , 179.

80

suckles, plums, sugarcane, blackberries. They even speak of
“summer at night,” “air soft and warm,” and “them long rains
in winter.” Finally, Jake and his friends say,

“Boy, the South's good. . .”

“. . . and bad!”

“It’s Heaven. . .”

“. . .and Hell. . .”

“. . .all rolled into one!”

“The only difference between the North and the
South is, them guys down there’ll kill you, and
these up here’ll let you starve to death.“3

Throughout their conversation, the four speak with a
kind of folk humor or break into “down home” rhyme at times:

“A naughts a naught

A figger’s a figger
All for the white man

None for the nigger . .

“Don’t like liver
Don’t like hash
Rather be a nigger
Than poor white trash. .

II

“Heaven is up
South is down
Lawd, Lawd
I’m Northward Bound. . .”“
These are moments where Jake once again demonstrates
that he not only has retained his Southern orientation

but that he does so with lucidity and complete

understanding. Suggested here is that there is no escape for

 

43Ibid., 178-180.
4‘Ibid., 177-176.

81

the “Negro” in America until he becomes “propelled,” as all
other “Negro” workers, “by the harsh conditions of their

lives,[and demonstrate] this consciousness and mobility

for economic and political action.”‘5

Wright’s solution to this problem is discussed in
“Blueprint” under ”The Problem of Nationalism in Negro
Writing,” where he asks “Negro” writers to recognize the
nationalistic character of the Negro people that
psychologically reflects the whole of Negro culture, and
especially folklore. He believes that

in the absence of fixed and nourishing forms of
culture, the Negro has a folklore which embodies
the memories and hopes Of his struggle for
freedom. Not yet caught in paint or stone, and as
yet but feebly depicted in the poem and novel, the
Negroes’ most powerful images of hope and despair
still remain in the fluid state Of daily speech.
How many John Henrys have lived and died on the
lips of these black peOple? How many mythical
heroes in embryo have been allowed to perish for
lack of husbanding by alert intelligence.“6

Wright continues:

Negro folklore contains . . . the collective sense
Of Negro life in America. Let those who shy at
the nationalist implications of Negro life look as
this body of folklore, living and powerful, which
rose out of a common life and a common fate.‘7

Wright also says, “It was . . .in a folklore moulded out
of rigorous and inhuman conditions of life that the Negro

achieved his most indigenous and complex expression.”‘e

 

45n31ueprint for Negro writing,” 1381.
“Ibid. , 1362.
‘7 Ibid.

82

Jake and his friends survived the dull routine of the
physically and emotionally draining postal work for another
day, and at the end of the Shift

as though they were dead men come suddenly to
life, they dropped the mail and ran to the
timecard racks; then, holding to banisters, they
galloped down the winding steel stairs three steps
at a time. . . .‘9
This is the beginning of the final part of the novel, “Rat’s
Alley.” Jake and his friends seek escape in a lurid night
spot. Jake’s “night out on the town” becomes a brutal
misadventure when he accuses a prostitute of helping a
pickpocket steal his money. He is beaten by club patrons
and thrown out in an alley.

At this point, we are able to see what Jake considers
“a deep sense of ease and freedom” as he looks over the
crowd at the brothel. Jake pays a high price for this ease
and freedom as he attempts to satisfy a hunger that he could
feel in his stomach, in his legs, even in the tips of his
fingers.”50 The treat is on him: he pays for the “likker,”
the taXi cab, the cigars, and the food at the brothel. When
he is ready to pay the prostitute for impending services, he
realizes that the remaining part of the one hundred dollars

was stolen when the man bumped into him on the dance floor.

Jake’s outrage at losing his money causes him to be beaten

 

‘91bid., 1363.
‘9Lavd deay!, 191.
5°Ibid., 192.

83

and thrown out of the brothel into an alley, penniless and
sexually unfulfilled. Jake, with the help of his friends,
manages to get home that night. Wright ends the novel as it
began, Jake beats his wife Lil and falls into a drunken
sleep.

At this point, it is important to note that creating a
sense Of community through literature was crucial for
Richard Wright. In “Blueprint,” Wright states that creating
this sense of community would come through developing a
class and social consciousness:

The Negro writer who seeks to function within his
race as a purposeful agent has a serious
responsibility. In order to do justice to his
subject matter, in order to depict Negro life in
all of its manifold and intricate relationship, a
deep, informed, and complex consciousness is
necessary.51

Wright is quite effective in providing a realistic portrait
of a black community on the South Side Of Chicago.

One facet of the community that Wright describes is the
local barbershop:

He [Jake] looked at the storefronts to see where
he was. He pressed his face against the glass and
looked inside. The shop was crowded with a mass
of waving arms and flashing teeth and twisted
black faces. A whirlwind argument was raging;
everybody was screaming at once, contending for
the right to speak by trying to drown out the
other’s voice. In the center Of the crowd five
black faces were yelling at one another. He caught
a glimpse of Doc Higgins. His voice was far
heavier than all the rest, and finally took the

 

511Wright, “Blueprint for Negro‘writing,” 1384.

84

floor by sheer lungpower, pounding his chubby fist
into his fat palm.

As a gathering place for the men in the community, the
barber shop serves as an informal town hall. The argument

in the scene is over communism, and the reader gains insight
into the social and political thinking of this community.
The majority of the men think that communism is foolish and
futile.

Recognizing that the Marcus Garvey movement is an
integral part of the black community and the black
experience, Wright includes the black pride march as one of
the sights Jake sees before he goes to work:

Then came two flags: the American flag and the
African flag. The African flag was composed of
three wide stripes of red, green, and black. Next
came a group of men wearing black uniforms
decorated with clusters of gold braid. They
marched in close formation, eight abreast their
left feet hitting the pavement in unison to the
beats of music. These were the supreme generals of
a mythical African republic, and the medals of
unfought wars and unknown victories clinched
against their uniforms with every rattle of the
drums.53

It is important to note the reaction of Jake and his

friends to the march:

“You know what I don't like about them
folks?” asked Jake.

“What?”

“They wants us to go back to Africa.”
“I don’t like that either.”

“They’s sure nuts on that point.”

 

521bid., 52.
53Ibid., 107.

85

“And if we went back to Africa, what
would we do?”

“You’ll have to ask them that”

“Aw . . . They nuts as hell,” said
Jake, with an impatient wave Of the han

d.54
Here, Wright is voicing his own reservation about black
nationalist movements. He “admired the dynamism and pride
of the people involved in the Marcus Garvey movement;
however, he was skeptical and distrusted the bombastic
nature of the various revolutionary proposals.”55 Critic
Russell Brignano states, “the single dominant image running
through Lawd Today! is a call to freedom.”56 The black
pride parade was supposedly a symbol of this call, but
Wright makes it clear in “Blueprint for Negro Writing” that
such endeavors have “unrealizable aims within the framework
of capitalist America.”57
In the final section of Lawd Today!, Wright depicts

another facet of the black community that is both colorful
and sordid. It is the brothel where Jake and his friends
rushed to at the end of their workday:

They pushed into a big room jammed with dancers.

Shouts, laughter, and snatches of song swung

through the smoky air. A threepiece jazz

band--a cornet, a drum, and a piano--made raucous

music in a corner There were gamblers, pimps,
petty thieves, dope peddlers, smallfry

 

54Ibid., 109.

”Fabre, The Unfinished Quest of Richard Wright, 80-81.
55Russell Carl Brignano, Richard wright: An Introduction to
the.Man and His werks (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh
Press, 1970), 25.

57"Blueprint,” 1383.

86

politicians, grafters, racketeers of various
shades, athletes, high school and college students
in search of “life”, and hordes of sexeager
youngsters. The women were white, ivory, yellow,
light brown, medium brown, solid brown, dark
brown, near black, and black. They wore red,
yellow, brown, blue, purple, and black gowns with
V shapes reaching down almost to their waists.
Their bosoms were high and bulging, and they
danced with an Obvious exaggeration of motion.58

Here, Wright is making strong commentary about the
pathological existence Of the community of urban blacks. It
is a radical transformation from the rural existence
described by Jake earlier in the novel.

Russell Carl Brignano makes this the observation
about the community Wright created in the novel:

The black world of Lawd Today! is lurid and
disreputable.. On its periphery is the white man’s
land, entered by Jake and his friends only when
they travel jobs in Chicago’s central post Office.
After work they retreat into the noise, crime,
and household tensions of the strip set aside for
them by whites. The slice of the white world that
they do see combines the inherent impersonal
tendencies of the city with the reality Of the
whites’ rejection of the Negro.59

In “Blueprint for Negro Writing,” Wright describes how and
why this world/ community exists:

The nationalist aspects of Negro life are as
sharply manifest in the social institution of
Negro people as in folklore. There is a Negro
church, a Negro press, a Negro social world, a
Negro sporting world, a Negro business world,

a Negro school system, Negro professions; in
short, a Negro way of life in America. The Negro

 

5°Wright, Lawd Today!, 194-95.
s’9Brignano,Richard wright:.An Introdhction to the.Man and
His Nerks, 25.

87

people did not ask for this, and deep down,

though they express themselves through their

institutions and adhere to this special way of

life, they do not want it now.60
Although Wright is describing a Jim Crow South, it is
indicative of a segregation that exists throughout 1930’s
America. Wright displays a certain social consciousness in
his depiction Of the Chicago urban environment. In turn, he
also created a central character who embodied a particular
mentality within the community.

The story of Lawd Today! is told through the life of

Jake Jackson. The reader is taken through a twenty-four
hour period in his life. This day is a typical one for
Jake, and it is also Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, February
12. The celebration of Lincoln’s life and career is an
ironic contrast to the current plight of African-Americans
in 1930’s America. Wright makes it painfully clear that
despite Jake’s legal freedom, he is indeed a slave. He is
enslaved by a corrupt capitalist system through debt, and he
is even more a “slave to the values of the civilization that
exploits him.” His ten suits hanging in the closet give him
a sense of pride and achievement; “he regards America
as the freest, happiest nation on Earth and labels anyone

who criticizes America as “Reds.”61

In addition to being enslaved by outside forces, and

 

60Wright, “Blueprint for Negro Writing," 1383.
61Margolies, The Art of Richard Wright, 94-95.

88

his own values, Jake is also enslaved by “subjective
impulses, instincts and feelings which he only dimly
understands.“2 He seems unable to understand or acknowledge
the contradictions he feels about himself as an
African-American as exemplified in the dream at the
beginning of the novel. He expends great energy in his
climb, but he makes no progress.
Affecting his apparent situation is that Jake lives in
a perpetual state of denial. Edward Margolies makes this
comment regarding Jake’s denial:
He [Jake} knows in a profound sense that the goals
he wants to achieve are denied him because he is a
Negro. Jake will thus identify himself with white
people in chauvinistically hating “foreigners” and
“Red”. He will strive mightily before the mirror
each morning to remove the kinks from his hair so
that he will look less Negroid. He will try to
overcompensate the shame of his blackness by
buying expensive, ostentatious clothes he cannot
afford. In denying his identity, he denies his
experiences as well63
Jake Jackson and his friends may not be admirable
characters, but as Russell Carl Brignano Observes, “Wright
is not creating people to be emulated or pitied. They are
to be seen and understood.”6‘ Wright’s comment in
“Blueprint” makes this same point:
The workers of minority people, chafing under

exploitation, forge organizational forms of
struggle to better their lot. Lacking the

 

62Ihid. , 95.
63Margolies, The Art of Richard Wright, 96.
“Brignano, Richard Wright, 36.

89

handicaps of false ambition and property, they
have access to a wide social vision and a deep
social consciousness.65
What Wright means is that this what is needed within the
black community. Jake Jackson and his friends symbolize the
antithesis of this ideal. The absence of the consciousness
is what makes Jake what he is. In that way, Wright makes the
need more poignant.
In Lawd Today!, Richard Wright created a work explicit
social comment. The work reflected Wright’s development as
an intellectual and artist. AS Keneth Kinnamon states:
Irony is indeed the pervasive mood of Lawd Today!,
but the method is an unsparing naturalism. In
classic naturalistic tradition, moreover,
individual lives are determined by biological as
well as socioeconomic forces. The exigencies of
food, drink, and sex influence Jake and his
friends as much as racial and economic
discrimination.66

And Brignano states:
Wright was directing his attentions in
naturalistic fashion to a common reality of
everyday life in an urban ghetto produced by much
more than white attitudes toward Negroes.67

All and all, Wright is successful at putting into creative

form the ideas he expressed in “Blueprint for Negro

Writing.” In the essay, Wright implored black writers to

provide an unflinching portrait of black people and their

 

“Wright, "Blueprint”, 1361.
6“Kinnamon, The Energence of Richard Wright, 77-78.
6"Brignano, Richard Wright, 24.

90

experiences. While Wright’s apprentice novel lacks a certain
depth that can be seen in his later work, Lawd Today! is
quite effective and impressive on three fronts: (1) Wright’s
use of folklore, (2) the depiction of a black urban
community and (3) the character of Jake Jackson.

For Wright, black folklore embodied the totality of the
black experience in America. Wright recognized the
significance of black folklore in understanding black
culture. It is this recognition that allowed Wright to
create it, in a very realistic fashion, the language of the
characters in Lawd Today!. Through the language, the reader
gains insight into the characters and their Southern/rural
past.

In addition to understanding the importance of
language, Wright was a keen observer of the South Side
Chicago community in which he was living. In Lawd Today!,
Wright evoked the sights, sounds, and general landscape of a
black community in 1930’s Chicago. Although the details that
Wright provided were a bit monotonous at times, they were
very effective in allowing the reader to “see” Jake
Jackson’s world.

The reader is also allowed to see Jake Jackson--the
black anti-hero. Edward Margolies makes this provocative
observation about Wright’s central character:

Jake Jackson is a loutish, heavyhanded, narrow,

frustrated, and prejudiced petite bourgeois who,

91

though unable to cope with his environment,
refuses to reject it--and it is incapable of
dreaming of a life different from the kind he
knows. Yet, for all his limitations, Wright
invests him with a sense of life that simmers just
below the surface of his dreary existence. Here
then lies the crux of Wright’s success, for
despite the huge indebtedness to other modern
authors, the book is distinctly Wright’s and the
life and times he evokes are as immediate and as
crushinglg felt as his more popular radical
fiction.6
Ultimately, Wright seems to be saying that Jake Jackson and
others like him are the products of a racist society and of
capitalism. And it is this society which creates and
controls theirs.

Wright’s first attempt at a novel represented a
significant step in his development as a creative artist.
The work that he produced was a critical foundation for him
as a novelist. Lawd Today! was a prelude to Native Son. The
structure, focus and thematic concerns raised in Lawd Today!

would be more dramatically realized in Wright’s second

novel.

 

“Margolies, The Art of Richard Wright, 90-91.

92

CHAPTER FOUR
IN THE ABSENCE OF SOUTHERN SOIL: NATIVE SON AND THE HARLEM
RENAISSANCE

In 1937, Richard Wright traveled to New York in order
to “become a serious writer.” New York was the center of the
literary world. It was here that he wrote Native Son. This
groundbreaking 1940 novel has been credited with “changing
the course of Negro writing in America.”1 Much has been
written about the work over the past sixty years. For the
purpose Of this study, it is necessary to analyze the work
as the centerpiece of the Chicago Renaissance. Wright’s
Native Son represented a significant departure from the
Harlem Renaissance of the 1920’s and 1930’s.

Although the main tenets of the Harlem Renaissance
were challenged by Wright in his 1937 essay “Blueprint for
Negro Writing,” Native Son is the creative manifestation of
this challenge. Wright’s novel signified a departure from
Harlem Renaissance novels in several ways: (1) the creation
of Bigger Thomas as a black anti-hero, (2) the focus on the

harsh realities of urbanization and (3) the inclusion of

 

1Robert Bone, “Richard‘wright and the Chicago Renaissance,”
callaloo (Summer 1986): 448.

93

Communist ideas. In order to fully understand the
Significance of Native Son as the creative centerpiece of
the Chicago Renaissance, it is necessary to conduct a
comparative analysis of the novel and the novels of the
Harlem Renaissance.

The Harlem Renaissance signified a crucial phrase in
the development of black culture during the early twentieth
century. During the period, black artists and intellectuals
searched for and forged an identity. The period witnessed an
unprecedented outpouring of publications by
African—Americans. These artist and intellectuals tapped
into their own past(Africa, southern black folkways) in an
attempt to define themselves and their experience.

Harlem Renaissance novelists, like other artists of the
period, reflected the variety and scope Of the “New Negro”
movement. At the center Of the works, however, was an
attempt at self-definition. As Amritjit Singh points out,
two patterns emerged in various depictions of black life in
America--(l) primitivism and (2) “Americanness”:

On one side are McKay, Toomer and Bontemps who
attempt to bring out the instinctive joy and
abandon in the life of the black, and his ability
to withstand commercialism and mechanization in a
decade when the fear of standardization was almost
obsessive in both Europe and America. These
writers celebrated the life-styles of black folk
in the plantations of Georgia or the West Indies,
and in the growing black communities in urban
centers such as New York, Washington, D.C. and

Chicago. On the other Side were writers and race
leaders who thought that the Negro’s best chance

94

for greater civil rights lay in their
presenting him as an American distinguished from
white only in skin color.2

Primitivism was best exemplified by Claude McKay in his
trilogy Heme to Harlem, Banjo, and Banana Bottom. McKay,
like other Renaissance artists, “was seeking new,
distinctive and positive images of African-Americans.”3 He
believed firmly that there were legitimate differences
between blacks and whites. Each racial group had its own
cultural identity which was shaped by a unique heritage and
experience.

For McKay, the black experience was defined by a rich
African past. McKay’s characters sing, dance, love, and
sleep with abandon and joy. These activities “represented
the uninterrupted stream Of values and attitudes which were
brought from Africa and helped blacks cope with tortuous
lives in the West.”‘ McKay’s African-American is a
“vagabond” who lives on instinct. One Of McKay’s most
notable “vagabonds” was Jake, the central character of his
1928 novel Heme to Harlem. Jake is the “typical McKay
protagonist--the primitive black man who is untouched by the

decay of civilization.”5 He is fiercely independent and

 

2Amrijit Singh, The Nevels of the Harlem Renaissance: TWelve
.Black writers 1923-1933 (University Park: Pennsylvania St.
University Press, 1976), 42.

31bid.

41bid., 43.

5Robert Bone, The Negro Nevel in America (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1965), 69.

95

rejects middle-class values. At the beginning of the novel,
he has gone AWOL from “the white folks’ war” and comes
“home to Harlem.” He picks up a prostitute and is fascinated
by her. After their night together, Jake spends the rest of
the novel searching for her throughout Harlem.
Through this journey, the reader comes to understand
Jake quite clearly. As Robert Bone observes:
Jake represents pure instinct. Physical
well—being-—whether from good food, good liquor,
or a good woman--is his prime value. Work when you
feel like it. Loaf when the mood strikes you. Take
life easy. Joy is the key word in understanding
Jake. Through Jake, McKay strikes at the heart of
the Protestant ethic.6
And Amritjit Singh makes this insightful comment:
Yet Jake is a part Of the whole. Blues, ragtime
songs, and jazzy dancing at the cabarets and
speakeasies as well as brutal violence exhibited
in fights over petty jealousies create the Heme to
Harlem world.7
Jake and the Harlem which he inhabits are central to McKay’s
view; a world view characterized by “black vagabond vs.
white civilization.”e McKay sought values to oppose
bourgeois society.

McKay continued his search in the 1929 sequel to Home

to Harlem--Banjo. The story moves from Harlem to Marseilles,
France but the main symbols are the same. The main

character, Banjo, is Jake, an irrepressible “free spirit.”

 

6Bone, The Negro Nevel in America, 68.
7Singh, The Nevels of the Harlem Renaissance, 44.
0Bone, The Negro Nevel in America, 71.

96

The sexuality of the main character, once again, helps to
exemplify and dramatize primitivism. Banjo, like Jake, is a
“natural philanderer” who deals with women with a certain
coolness.9
Although Banjo is the central character, Ray, a
secondary character, comes to dominate crucial sections of
the story. As an aspiring writer, Ray is McKay’s voice. As
Amritjit Singh notes, Ray “Opens a Pandora’s box of
unresolved and complex race-related issues.”10 He [Ray] is
torn and confused by his predicament as an educated black
man. Internally, he wrestles with race consciousness,
education and his place within Western world. He doesn’t
have Banjo’s “instinct” for living as a vagabond, but he
feels that “he was a savage, even though a sensitive one.”11
He has received a classical education but does not see its
value to black people. He loves Harlem for “its composite
voice, the fruitiness of its laughter, the trailing
rhythm of its ‘blues,’ but hates it for “its brutality, gang
rowdyism, promiscuous thickness.”12 This dichotomy is
central to McKay’s works as he explores African-Americans’
relationship to the oppositions between “instinct” and

“intellect,” “primitivism” and “civilization.”13

 

9Singh, Nbvels of the Harlem Renaissance, 48.
1°Tbid.

11McKay, Banjo, 226-27.

121hid., 267.

13Singh, Novels of the Harlem Renaissance, 51.

97

The world which Banjo inhabits--the Quarter Reserve on
the Marseilles beach-—is similar to the Harlem of Heme to

Harlem in that it is an environment free from the “stifling
impediments of western civilization.” It is depicted as a
microcosm “where all human colors and shades come together
in a continual celebrating and contesting of their instinct
to live.”14 It is an environment permeated by free sex and
other forms of “hedonism.”

Ray, a secondary character, is crucial in expressing
McKay’s views on education when he explains that the
objective of education should be teaching “something of real
decency in dealing with all kinds and classes of people.”15
However, as Ray goes on to say, Western education fails in
the task:

You get a white man’s education and learn to
despise your own peOple...Then when you realize
with the shock that you don’t and can't belong to
the white race...you are a lost crowd, you
educated Negroes, and you will only find yourself
in the roots of your own people.16

In addition to the self—deprecating effects of a
Western education, McKay makes numerous references to the
“poisonous orchids of civilization” that stand in contrast

to the “instinctive life that derives from contact with

African racial roots.”17 It is this “contact” or connection

 

141hid., 46.
15McKay, Banjo, 272.
1‘Ibid., 200-201.
17ihid., 56.

98

to an African past that will create balance and will be the
saving grace for black people attempting to function and
survive in the Western world.

This cultural dualism and eternal conflict between the
primitive identity and Western civilization is given more
depth McKay’s third and last novel Banana Bottom. McKay is
most successful in bringing this conflict to fruition in
this 1933 work. The story is set in McKay's native Jamaica.
This setting helps to develop a sense Of folk culture and
accentuates the clash between primitive and Western
values.18 Bita Plant, McKay’s protagonist, has been adopted
by a white missionary couple--the Craigs. Unlike Jake or
Banjo, “Bita is able to move with some freedom between the
Western world and her native home.”19 She has been educated
in an English missionary school and returns to assist her
adopted parents with their missionary work.

She soon becomes restless under the strict guidance Of
the mission. Eventually, there is a struggle: “On the one
side is the Christ God, the Calvinist austerity, and the
naive ethnocentrism Of the Mission. 0n the other is the
Obeah God, the primitive sexuality, and the simple values of
the folk culture.”2° Bita responds by asserting her

confidence in her identity and her heritage: “I thank God

 

1”Bone, The Negro Nevel in.America, 72.
19Ibid.
2°n>id.

99

that although I was brought up and educated among white
people, I have never wanted to be anything but myself. I
take pride in being coloured and different...I can’t
imagine anything more tragic than people torturing
themselves to be different from their natural unchangeable
selves.”21

According to Amritji Singh, “Bita represents McKay’s
successful synthesis of ‘instinct’ and ‘intellect.”’22 The
conclusion of the novel symbolically defines and describes
the end of Bita’s “journey” as she rejects numerous marriage
proposals from light-skinned educated blacks and decides to
marry the honest but uncouth Jubban, who is proud, sensitive
to nature, and respectful Of Bita’s artistic and
intellectual interests.

McKay’s exploration of primitivism was one crucial
facet of Harlem Renaissance ideology and theme. Other Harlem
Renaissance novelists sought to dramatize the Americanness
Of the African—American experience. One of the most notable
proponents of this approach was Jessie Fauset. Unlike McKay,
Fauset wrote about “the better class of colored people.”
These middle-class black folks were central characters in

four novels she produced during the Harlem Renaissance. Her

third novel, The Chinaberry Tree, best exemplified the

 

21'McKay, Banana Bottom, 169.
22Singh, The Nevels of the Harlem Renaissance, 54.

100

Americanness orientation, not necessarily in the story
itself but in the intent of the novel and the world it
created. Fauset’s intention was to depict “something of the
life of the colored American who is not being pressed too
hard by the forces of Prejudice, Ignorance and Economic
Injustice. And behold he is not vastly different from any
other American, just distinctive.”23
The story concerns two illegitimate girls and their
efforts to “break through the barriers of the black
community of Red Brook, New Jersey, in order to win
happiness in love and marriage.” This community is part of a
larger world which drama critic Theophilus Lewis of the
ihnsterdam News described in 1924:
It is a planet where all the women are lovely and
the men handsome enough to illustrate collar ads.
The highest virtue in that halcyon world is
respectability. The most precious possession is an
Old Philadelphia ancestry, or next to that, an old
Red Brook background. A finishing school o.k. is
desired but not required of young ladies. Young
men must present a college degree and no back
talk. With those preliminary qualifications
clutched tightly in their fists, the boys and
girls are ready for action in a realm where love
is the sweetest thing-~and the greatest thing.2‘
Fauset’s emphasis on the desire for respectability
reSonated with the Harlem Renaissance community. W.E.B. Du

Bois; was particularly impressed: “It is, therefore, not

aCCOrding to Hoyle that an interracial sexual lapse should

 

 

iilbid” 62.
Theophilus Lewis, Amsterdam News, 5 May 1934.

101

fasten itself upon a little colored community like a pall
and be worked out only in generations. Or that sexual
looseness within the race should literally blast a
household.”25

Somewhere “in between Claude McKay’s primitivism and
Jessie Fauset’s black bourgeoisie stands Jean Toomer’s

Cane.”26 Yet, as Amritjit Singh points out, Cane also
“exists outside the matrix defined by the two authors.”27
Toomer’s 1923 novel is generally recognized as the hallmark
of the Harlem Renaissance. Toomer, like most Harlem
Renaissance artists, looked to the African—American past for
positive images. And like McKay, he “Opposed the values of
black folk to the increasing standardization of urban and
industrial life.”28 Toomer “portrays blacks as having a
firmer cultural foundation than whites due to the fact that
they worked in the fields of the South and thus were closer
to nature.”29 Unlike McKay, however, Toomer did not look to
Africa in his search for the African-American cultural
identity.

According to Toomer, this African—American identity lay

firmly in the slave South. Slavery is at the center of Part

 

25W;E.B. Du Bois, review of The Chinaberry Tree, In The
Crisis (April 1932)

2ssingh, Nevels of the Harlem Renaissance, 64.

2"Ibid.

2°Ibid., 69.

29Ibid.

102

One of Cane. The book is a collection of poetry and prose.
Part One is a series of portraits of women. These women are
“primitives” who are shaped largely by their slave
inheritance; “each in some way is incomplete and
stultified.”3° The story of Fern aka Fernie May Rosen
articulates the theme of Part One. Fern is a product Of a
Jewish father and black mother. Toomer speaks of her
suffering by combining the cultural heritage of both: “at
first Sight of her I felt as if I heard a Jewish canter
sing...as if his singing rose above the unheard chorus Of a
folksong.”31 Fern is painfully unsuccessful in her attempts
to find fulfillment. Her eyes are central to the story. As
the narrator points out, “they sought nothing--that is,
nothing that was obvious and tangible and that one could
see, and they gave the impression that nothing was to be
denied.”32 There was nothing a man could give her. She
desired nothing, or “She desired something so grand
and so profound and so essential that it was, in fact,
nothing.”33
Part Two of Cane Shifts to the city. In Washington
D.C., the reader sees an enslavement and attachment of the

people to the “entrapments” of civilization. Inorganic

 

3°Nathan Huggins, Harlem Renaissance (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1971), 181.

31Jean Toomer, cane (New York: Boni and Liverlight), 23.
321516. , 25 .

33Ibid.

103

objects and property are powerful symbols as Toomer
describes a kind of Spiritual death. The human soul has been
crushed by modern industrial society. Two stories, “Box
Seat” and “Kabnis” realize Toomer’s central theme. In “Box
Seat,” Dan Moore, a preacher, is in love with Muriel, a
school teacher. Moore is a primitive who was born in a
canefield and has been “touched by the hands of Jesus.”3‘
He describes a heavy black woman who sits beside him in the
theater: “A soil—soaked fragrance comes from her. Through
the cement floor her roots sink down...and disappear in
blood-lines that waver south.”35

Muriel is also in the theater. She had come with her
girlfriend in order to avoid Dave. She sits in the box seat
to watch a brutal boxing match between two dwarfs. Her box
seat is removed from the crowd; but she is visible to all.
As Nathan Huggins observes, “Such is her social pretension
and her enslavement to convention; she denies to herself
free and honest human contact, for she is controlled by
society’s view of her.”36

After the match is over, the victor presents to Muriel
a blood splattered rose. Repulsed, she refuses then
considers, and finally she accepts. But “she has recoiled

from the dwarf, as she recoils from reality, from her

 

3‘Ihid. , 26.
35mm. ,35.
36Huggins, Harlem Renaissance, 185.

104

people, from her past.”37 Overcome with disgust for Muriel’s
hypocrisy, Dan rises to shout: “JESUS WAS ONCE A LEPER!” He

then rushes from the theater and is finally free of his love
for Muriel.

Following “Box Seat” is “Kabnis” which makes up the
third and final section of the book. Toomer comes full
circle and returns to rural Georgia to tell the story of
Ralph Kabnis, a Northern school teacher who “cringes in the
face of his tradition.”38

He cannot embrace the suffering Of the past, symbolized
by slavery; “cannot master his pathological fear of being
lynched.”39 Halsey, a blacksmith, has been absorbed by the
southern community. He “belongs” in a way that Kabnis does
not. He is an Uncle Tom figure who is compliant to the
indignities of black life in the South. Beneath Halsey’s
shop lives Father John, an Old black man. Father John is a
former slave “who represents a link with the black ancestral
past.”‘0 He has been hidden from view by the present
generation because he is a symbol of an “unpleasant
memory.“1 Ultimately, Kabnis refuses to accept or
acknowledge Father John and goes so far as to claim that his

ancestors were southern bluebloods. Toomer leaves the task

 

37Toomer, cane, 71.

3°Ibid. , 101 .

39Bone,.Negro Nevel in America, 87.
“Ibid. , 88.

“Ibid.

105

of embracing the past and moving foreword to the youth.
Toomer’s answer to the quest for black identity is “to
face the realities of the southern slave past and claim them
as one’s own.“2 It is to acknowledge and accept the Slave
experience in order to be completely connected to it. Nathan
Huggins makes this insightful comment:
Of all these efforts to define a Negro identity,
Jean Toomer's seems the most profound and
provocative. Attempts to find black models in
convention and the Protestant Ethic were
unsatisfactory because they had to ignore the
reality of actual black people.‘3
Toomer’s primitivism was rooted in the American past. His
contemporaries such as Claude McKay sought a cultural
identity through a connection with Africa although his
actual knowledge of the continent was very limited. As
Nathan Huggins points out,“whatever McKay’s fantasy was,
African tribal life in reality was very formal and
obligatory to its members. Jake and Banjo could not survive,
fornicating at their pleasure and serving no social
function.”“ Huggins goes on to say this about Toomer:
The real power of Jean Toomer’s conception and
its superiority to the romanticism of McKay and
Cullen was that Cane, though symbolic and
mystical, dealt with the past as a palpable
reality. It faced the fact of the South and
slavery. The final and perhaps supreme irony of

the primitives was that they were, in their
fancy of Timbuctoo and Alexander, forsaking their

 

‘zHuggins, Harlem Renaissance, 186.
43Ibid. , 167.
“Ibid., 188.

106

actual past.“5

Richard Wright’s creative endeavors were similar to
Toomer’s in that they were firmly rooted in the realities of
the black experience in America. Like Toomer, Wright also
articulated the value(s) of embracing the southern folk
past. But Wright was equally concerned with raising the
social and political consciousness of black people. In his
quest, he produced Native Son.

In Bigger Thomas, Wright created a nightmare
personified. Bigger, according to Wright, was the product of
a racist and oppressive society. His life and ghetto
environment were the end result of an urbanization process
which transformed the lives of millions of African-
Americans. Bigger was definitely not a primitive. He was not
the free-spirited vagabond that one sees in Claude McKay’s
Jake or Banjo. He was not a member of the black bourgeoisie
fighting for respectability as seen in Jessie Fauset’s
world. Bigger Thomas was a monster. And he was very real.

Numerous critics have asserted that Bigger Thomas was
Wright. Indeed there are the obvious similarities: “both are
Mississippi-born blacks who migrated to Chicago; both live
with their mothers in the worst Slums of the Black Belt;
both were motivated by fear; both were rebellious by

temperament.”‘5.According to Wright in “How Bigger Was

 

‘5Ibid.

107

Born,” Bigger Thomas was a composite portrait Of a number of
individuals with whom Wright was familiar.

There were five Bigger prototypes he had known in the
South. All rebelled in one way or another against Jim Crow
and all of them suffered for their defiance: “They were
shot, hanged, maimed, lynched, and generally hounded until
they were either dead or their spirits broken.”‘7 Wright
found examples of the “Bigger Thomas type” in his work with
the South Side Boys’ Club in Chicago-- “fearful, restless,
moody, frustrated, alienated, violent youths struggling for
survival in the urban jungle.”48

Critic Dan McCall makes this statement about Bigger
Thomas: “In the figure of Bigger Thomas, Wright was trying
to Show the ultimate sense Of horror: unpreparedness set
loose in a metropolis.”‘9 He then goes on to say this:

Anyone who has read The Autobiography of Malcolm X
or.Manchild in the Promised Land or Eldridge
Cleaver’s remarkable Soul on Ice can see Bigger

in the characters he authors draw around them and
explore, with considerable courage,

themselves.so

Bigger Thomas was grounded in a certain reality that was

 

4“Keneth Kinnamon, The Emergence of'Richard Wright: A Study
in Literature and Society (Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 1972), 119.

"Ibid.

“Ibid. , 120.

‘9DaniMeCall, “The Social Significance of Bigger Thomas,” in
Richard Wright’s Native Son: A Critical Handbook, ed.
Richard Aboarian (Belmont, California:‘Wadsworth Publishing
Co., 1970), 183.

5°Ibid., 164.

108

unseen in the Harlem Renaissance. This is not to say that
Harlem Renaissance artists did not base their characters on
real people. However, it is difficult to find a character
similar to Bigger Thomas during the period.

Bigger’s complexity signifies a departure from Harlem
Renaissance characters. As Keneth Kinnamon observes,
“Bigger’s personality is comprised primarily of fear, shame,
and hatred.”51 In Bigger Thomas Wright provided an
exploration into the psychology of an oppressed mind. Part I
is entitled “Fear.” Throughout the section, “Bigger battles
fear; a fear that stems from various sources: a large rat, a
fight with Gus, and most significantly being found in white
girl’s room.”52 The last source of fear leads to a murder
which “reveals Bigger’s uncontrollable fear Of whites.”53.As
Kinnamon points out:

Bigger’s consciousness of the fear creates a sense
of shame at his own inadequacy, equated by whites
with his racial status. This combination of fear
and shame produces hatred, both self-hatred and
hatred for the inequities in his life and the
whites responsible for these inequities.5‘

These inequities have forced Bigger to live on the
margins Of “civilization.” Bigger is conscious of his

isolation: “We black and they white. They got things and we

ain’t. They do things and we can’t. It’s just like living in

 

5J'Kinnamon, The.Emergence of Richard Wright, 130.
521bid.
53Ibid.
5"Ibid.

109

jail. Half the time I feel like I'm on the outside Of the
world peeping in through a knothole in the fence.”55 In his
isolation, Bigger sees a “white” world in which he could
never exist. This world, albeit somewhat superficial, is
presented to him in the film The Gay Woman, in which there
are “scenes of cocktail drinking, dancing, golfing,
swimming, and spinning roulette wheels, a rich young

white woman kept clandestine appointments with her lover
while her millionaire husband was busy in the offices of a
vast paper mill.”56

Bigger is not only isolated from this glittery white
world, he is also isolated from certain facets of the black
community. Unlike Claude McKay’s Jake, Bigger does not drown
himself in a world of jazz clubs, speakeasies, and brothels.
Wright does not make that world available to him. Bigger is
trapped in a Slum; trapped in a cycle of poverty,
degradation and isolation.

However, Wright does provide Bigger with escape. The
murder Of Mary Dalton allows Bigger to break through the
confines Of his daily life. The murder is presented as an
act of creation: “The knowledge that he had killed a white
girl they loved and regarded as their symbol of beauty made

him feel the equal to them, like a man who had been somehow

 

55Richard‘wright, Native son (New York: Harper and Row,
1940), 17.
551516. , 26.

110

cheated, but had now evened the score. Bigger had murdered
and created a new life for himself.”57

This episode of the novel would have been inconceivable
during the Harlem Renaissance. Primitives of the Harlem
Renaissance rebelled through sex, music and a rejection of
the modernization of the age. Bigger Thomas lashes out
against racism through murder; the murder of a white girl no
less. An act with such overt racial connotations was not
seen during the Harlem Renaissance.

Harlem Renaissance artists were more concerned with
self-definition than with protest and such overt racial
commentary..Artists of the Harlem Renaissance sought an
identity. Primitivism was part of the process of exploring
and defining that identity. Richard Wright was not concerned
with black identity as much as making explicit social
commentary. Bigger Thomas was both reality and symbol.

The reality of black existence in America was crucial
to the novel. One aspect of that existence was a unique
black folk culture. Wright makes this statement about the
folk tradition in “Blueprint for Negro Writing”:

It was, however, in a folklore molded out of
rigorous and inhuman conditions of life that the
Negro achieved his most indigenous and complete
expression. Blues, spirituals, and folktales
recounted from mouth to mouth; work songs sung

under blazing suns--all these formed the channels
through which the racial wisdom flowed.58

 

57Ihid. , 100.

111

However, this rich folk tradition was conspicuously absent
from Native Son. Wright was making a clear statement about
the loss of folk tradition in the city. As Dan McCall points
out:
Wright’s point is not to deny the Negro’s “folk
culture.” He was trying to Show that for these
urban slum dwellers the folk culture was swallowed
in unbearable closeness. To create a “folk
tradition” in the slum-~that is, to create whole
human beings in a brutally fragmented world--would
not be to take that world seriously. Wright saw
that if people do not have any chance to get
culture it is rather unlikely that they will have
its’ blessings.59
There is no folk tradition for Bigger Thomas to embrace.
There is no Southern soil to which he can return. This rural
world does not exist for him.

In the absence of Southern soil, there are only the
harsh realities of the ghetto. According to Wright, these
realities have shaped Bigger. This argument is central to
Part III of the novel as Bigger’s defender in court, Max,
makes his appeal. In attempting to explain “the meaning of
Bigger Thomas” and his actions, Wright infuses Communist
ideology into a work Of fiction. There is a consensus among
critics that Wright’s “grafting” of Communist rhetoric in

the final part of Native Son disrupted the structural flow

of the novel and “cheated him of a classic.”60

 

sowright, “Blueprint for Negro'writing," New Challenge (Fall
1937): 53-65.

59McCall, “The Social Significance of Bigger Thomas," 188.
5°Ibid., 189.

112

Although the inclusion of Communist ideology does not
blend in well creatively, it does demonstrate a profound
departure from the Harlem Renaissance. Claude McKay’s
primitives may have “gone against the grain” socially, but
they lacked a certain socio—political consciousness. Wright
provides Bigger with some awareness of the plight of poor
blacks in Chicago:

Even though Mr. Dalton gave millions of dollars
for Negro education, he would rent houses to
Negroes only in this prescribed area, the corner
of the city tumbling down from rot. In a sullen
way Bigger was conscious Of this.61
However, Wright pulls back from making Bigger too
sophisticated and uses Max as a spokesman. In one of the
last scenes of the novel, “Max directs Bigger’s attention tO
the skyscrapers of the city and states that they represent
what killed him, the capitalist economy.”62

Robert Bone makes these insightful observations about
the failure of Communism in Bigger’s life:

To Bigger, Communism is a matter not of his
ideology but of relatedness. Jan and Max are the
flimsy base on which he tries to erect his shield
Of hope. The Communist party is simply not strong
enough as a symbol of relatedness; Bigger’s
hatred, firmly anchored in his Negro nationalism,
is hardly challenged. The contest is unequal,
because there is nothing in Bigger’s life that

corresponds to “Communism.”63

Ultimately, “Bigger rejects Communism as he rejects various

 

61Wright, Native Son, 155.
152Ihid.
“SBone, The Negro Nevel in America, 150—151.

113

forms of hope and salvation during the last days of his
life: his family, race leaders and religion.”64
Bone also points out that “Bigger’s relation to Jan and
Max cannot be understood apart from the context of Wright’s
experience in the Communist party.”55 Wright was a member of
the party for twelve years(1932-1944). Although the party
had “been like a mother to him,” he gradually became
disillusioned. He resented party control over what he wrote
and how much time he could spend writing. He also began to
observe that the party was exploiting black people and
racial problems in America.66
Wright’s involvement with the party and the inclusion
of Communist ideology in Native Son speaks to the general
shift Of African-American socio-political thinking during
the 1930’s and 1940’s. The Great Depression forced a new
generation of artists and intellectuals to face the
realities Of class, economic exploitation and race. James 0.
Young makes this observation:
The novelists who came on the scene during the
later 1930’s moved away from stereotypes. They
attempted to explore the real lives of those
ordinary black folk who lived in the tenements.
Economic exploitation is present in most of their
fiction, but it is generally peripheral. As these

young writers probed deeper and deeper into the
reality Of black experience, the best of them

 

6‘Ihid., 150-151.

651hid. , 151 .

66Wright, “I Tried to be a Communist,” Atlantic Monthly
(August 1944): 61-70.

114

evoked a universality which escaped most of the
[Harlem] Renaissance writers; instead of trying to
romantically transcend reality, they immersed
themselves in it.57
Richard Wright was a leader among this new generation of
artists. With Native Son, Wright carved out a place for
himself in American literary and cultural history. The 1940
novel was the centerpiece of a new black literary movement
based in Chicago. Wright’s voice and the symbolism Of Bigger
Thomas signified a shift in black writing and culture.
Wright, as did most of his generation, moved beyond the
middle-class values and aspirations of the Harlem
Renaissance. More importantly, he also moved beyond the

exotic-primitive of the period into a new phase Of social

consciousness and protest.

 

67James 0. Young, Black writers of the Thirties (Baton
Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973), 205.

115

CHAPTER FIVE
BIG MAT, BIGGER THOMAS, AND BRONZEVILLE: THE CHICAGO
RENAISSANCE COMMUNITY

In 1940, Richard Wright’s Native Son forced Open a door
for a new generation of black artists. Although he
certainly did not invent the social realism of the day,
Wright was one Of its more articulate practitioners. One
year after Native Son was published, William Attaway, a
Chicago native, published his second and final novel Blood
on the Forge. Attaway along with Gwendolyn Brooks, Margaret
Walker, Willard Motley and Arna Bontemps were the key
figures of the Chicago Renaissance. A commitment to social
realism and social protest tied this community together.
More specifically, they wrote about black urbanization and
its destructive consequences. They focused on the lives Of
the ordinary and the downtrodden. William Attaway’s Blood
on the Forge is a vividly detailed folk history of the Great
Migration of African-Americans from the South to the urban
North that took place toward the end of World War I.
Attaway describes the transplanting of rural folk “from the

familiar violence of Southern feudalism to the strange

116

and savage violence of industrial capitalism.” 1 The most
profound and powerful theme of the work is the
disintegration of folk culture in a brutal urbanization
process. The novel is divided into five parts, the first of
which introduces the main characters in their natural
environment. The Moss brothers are shackled to the soil on
which they live by the sharecropping system. Farming is
largely useless because most of the topsoil has been washed
away over the course of the years. As Edward Margolies
points out, “The erosion Of the land suggests the erosion of
their morale which, in a sense, washes them off the land.”2

The Moss brothers “symbolically represent traditional
aspects Of the folk culture: Big Mat (Matthew), the
religious; Chinatown, the pagan; and Melody, the artistic.”3
Big Mat is central to the novel. He has ambitions of
becoming a preacher. An intensely religious man, Mat looks
to the Bible to explain his suffering. His wife Hattie has
had six miscarriages. Mat believes he has been cursed
because he was conceived in sin. However, this does not
necessarily explain the degradation suffered at the hands of
southern racism.

It is this realism and degradation that permeate the

 

1Robert Bone, The Negro Nevel in America (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1965), 133.
2EdwardiMargolies, Native sens (New York: J. B. Lippincott

Company, 1968), 54.
3Bone, Negro Navel, 133.

117

lives of the Moss brothers as Attaway presents a painfully
realistic picture of the early twentieth century southern
landscape. The South that Attaway presents is a stark
contrast to Jean Toomer’s Cane. Toomer’s South was a
“paradox of pain and beauty, a place of racial and cultural
‘healing’ for ‘lost' black folks who had been swallowed by a
modern industrial state.“l Attaway does not “romanticize
the virtues of the pastoral South but lays bare its brutal
oppression.”5
Big Mat’s response to this Oppression forces him and
his brothers to flee their native Kentucky. After Big Mat
beats a white overseer, the Moss brothers run North in order
to escape the inevitable lynch mob. Their journey
constitutes Part Two of the novel. The train ride to
Pennsylvania is a horrid experience. Crouched and huddled
in a dark boxcar with numerous other black “migrants,” the
Moss brothers are demoralized:
Squatted on the straw-spread floor of a boxcar,
bunched up like hogs headed for market, riding in
the dark for what might have been years, knowing
time only as dippers Of warm water gulped
whenever they were awake, helpless and dropping
because they were headed into the unknown and
there was no sun, they forgot even that they had
eyes in their heads and crawled around in the

boxcar, as though it were a solid thing of
blackness.6

 

‘Margolies, Native Sons, 54.

5Ibid.

6William..Attaway,.Blood on the Forge (New York: Doybleday
Doren and Company, Inc., 1941), 45.

118

Attaway goes on to describe the misery in the boxcar as a
“mass experience” which evoked the journey of enslaved

Africans on slave ships.7

When they finally arrive at their
destination, the Moss brothers are devastated and shaken
physically, as well as psychologically:
When the car finally stopped for a long time and
some men unsealed and slid back the big door, they
were blinded by the light of a cloudy day. In all
their heads, the train wheels still clicked. their
ears still heard the scream of steel on the
curves. Their bodies were motionless, but inside
they still jerked to the movement of a bouncing
freight car.8
As Edward Waldron observes, the journey is a “cruel
transplanting Of rural people” to a new, hostile urban
environment.9
This new environment is the setting of the remainder of
the novel. In Part III, Attaway articulates the main
themes. The Moss brothers ran from their native South to
escape racism. However, when they enter Allegheny County,
they discover racism in a new form. They are stoned by
white steelworkers who have learned that black labor is
imported from the South whenever there is talk of a strike

in the mills.

In many ways, life in the steel mills proves to be more

 

7Margolies, Native sens, 55.

9Attaway,.Blood on the Forge, 49.

9EdwardflWaldron, “William Attaway's.Blood on the Forge: The
Death of the Blues” in Negro.American Literature Fbrum
(Summer 1976): 58-60.

119

dehumanizing than the one they fled. The “green men” become
“gray men” in their new sterile “gray” community.10 They
receive an education on how to survive in their dangerous
work from their bunkhouse roommates. Most importantly, they
discover the drudgery of the mill. During twelve-hour work
days, “a clear warfare is waged between the steel and its
captors."11 Under these conditions, the Moss brothers
struggle to maintain their self-esteem. There is no white
overseer to beat them physically or mentally. Attaway
replaces him with the overwhelming and brutal presence Of
the machines:
‘Like spiral worms, all their egos had curled
under pressure from the giants around them. Soon
or later it came to all the green men: What do we
count for against machines that lift tons easy as
a guy takes a spoonful of gravy to his mouth.’12
There is a gradual disintegration of the MOSS brothers’
personalities as they attempt, unsuccessfully to adjust to
their new reality.13 Chinatown discovers that his gold
tooth can not charm the residents of the gray steel
community as it did in his native South. He longs for his
Kentucky home: the out-Of-doors, the feel of the earth

beneath his bare feet, the sun and the warmthnl‘ Melody

loses his passion for music and gives up his guitar. Big Mat

 

10Young,.Black Writers of the Thirties, 225-229.
11.Attaway,.Blood on the Forge, 50.

1211316. , 66.

13Bone, The Negro Navel in.America, 135.
1‘lMargolies,Native sens, 56.

120

abandons his Bible, and with it any hope of sending to
Kentucky for his wife.

This sense of erosion and loss is reinforced by
Attaway’s statement about the destructive nature of steel.
A crippled steel worker named Smothers delivers a profound
and prophetic soliloquy which implies that the violence in
the mills is retribution for man’s abuse of the land: “It’s
a sin to melt up the ground. . . . Steel bound to git
ever’body ‘cause ‘O that sin. They say I crazy, but mills
gone crazy cause men brin’ trainloads Of ground in here and
meltin’ it up.”15 As Edward Margolies observes, Smothers'
diatribe re-emphasizes Attaway’s contention that “the earth
gives moral and Spiritual sustenance to men, and that its
destruction transgresses nature and denies men their
potentialities.”16

As the novel progresses through Part IV, there is sense
of impending disaster. Smothers' words are clearly a
foreshadow. He goes on to say this: “Everybody better be on
the lookout. Steel liable to git somebody today. I got a
deep feelin’ in my bones.”17 He also tells the harrowing
story of how he lost his legs in the mill and how afterward,
“All the time in the hospital I kin hear that steel laughing

an’ talkin’ till it fit to bust my head clean open. . . . I

 

15Attaway,.Blood on the Forge, 178.
1“Margolies, Native sens, 57.
17Attawa'y,.Blood on the Forge, 178.

121

kin hear when cold steel whisper all the time and hot roll
steel scream like hell. It’s a sin to melt up the ground. .

\\ 18

Soon after Smothers’ “prophecy” there is an explosion
in the mill. There is a flash, followed by a blinding “a
mushroom cloud, streaked with whirling red fire. . . .” 19
Several workers, Smothers included, are killed. Chinatown
is blinded. As Edward Margolies points out, “Each of the
Moss brothers has now been rendered impotent: Chinatown,
who lives by outward symbols, can no longer see; Melody, who
lives through his music, can no longer play guitar; and Mat
has become a hulking shell of a man because Anna, a young
prostitute he has fallen in love with, no longer loves
him.”20

The Moss brothers were destroyed psychologically and
physically by the gray steel community. One brother, Big
Mat, makes an attempt to regain his manhood by participating
in the strike that divides Steeltown into two warring camps.
Big Mat’s exploits are the focus of the fifth and final
section of the novel. After being “deputized” with a group
Of professional strike-breakers, Big Mat joins a raid on
union headquarters. Although Big Mat is in the middle of

serious labor issues, Attaway makes it clear that he is not

 

1°Ibid., 176.
19Ibid. , 162.
2°1Margolies, Native sens, 59.

122

aware of the social and political implications:

Big Mat was not thinking about the labor trouble.
Yet he knew that he would not join the union. For
a man had so lately worked from dawn to dark in
the fields twelve hours and the long shift were
not killing. For a man who had ended each year in
debt any wage at all was a wonderful thing. For a
man who had known no personal liberties even the
iron hand of the mills was an advancement. In his
own way he thought these things. .As yet he could
not see beyond them.21

Not only is Big Mat “blind” to the larger realities
surrounding his experience, he ultimately regains his

manhood only through violence: “He had handled people, and

they feared him. Their fear had made him whole.”22

Ironically, it is in the midst of great violence that
finally gains “vision.” During the raid on the union
headquarters, Mat is beaten to death by a union sympathizer.
As he is dying, he has a provocative epiphany :

It seemed to him that he had been through all of
this once before. Only at that far time, his had
been the arm strong with hate. Yes, once he had
beaten down a riding boss. . . . Had that riding
boss been as he was now? Big Mat went farther
away and no longer could distinguish himself from
these other figures. They were all one and the
same. In that confusion he sees something true.
Maybe somewhere in the mills a new owner was
creating riding bosses, making a difference where
none existed.2

It is obvious that Attaway is imposing his political views

onto his central character as the novel concludes on a

 

21.Attawa‘y,.Blood on the Fbrge, 203.

22James O. Young,.Black Writers of the Thirties (Baton
RougezLouisana State Univ. Press, 1973), 229.
23Attawa‘y,.Blood on the Forge, 273-274.

123

didactic tone.24 In spite Of this aesthetic flaw, the
conclusion, is quite powerful and provocative.

Attaway’s Blood on the Forge and Wright’s Native Son
are companion pieces. Attaway describes the migration
experience of African-Americans and its destructive
consequences. Wright’s work describes the experience of one
“migrant” after the journey North had been completed. The
two novels not only complement each other but in several
aspects they are parallel.

Big Mat and Bigger Thomas are both victims of cruel
circumstances according tO their respective authors. Both
characters were created, transformed, and ultimately
destroyed by social and economic forces well beyond their
control. For Bigger Thomas, there was the impersonal and
inhumane city slum Of the South Side Of Chicago. Bigger
would never be able to adequately provide for his family or
move out or beyond the confines of the black ghetto and its
kitchenettes. Fear of being discovered with a white girl led
to a murder and Bigger’s death.

For Big Mat, it was the harsh racism of his native
Kentucky that shaped and defined his daily life. He faced
permanent exploitation under a brutal and oppressive
sharecropping system. When he lashed out against this

system, he was forced to flee his native South and undertake

 

2‘Bone, The Negro Novel in America, 139-40.

124

a harrowing journey to a new urban world. In this new world
the steel mills robbed him of his self-esteem and identity.
Political manipulation and exploitation placed him in a
position where there was no escape. He too died a
particularly brutal death that seemed inevitable.

In grappling with the social and economic issues, both
Attaway and Wright broadened the scope Of the portrait of
the black experience in America. Race and class were
crucial to both authors in shaping their socio-political
thinking and their art. Both authors have been placed under
the umbrella term “proletariat” writers of the Depression
years. In this vain, both authors have been roundly
criticized for imposing their political views on to their
art. Wright was “strongly encouraged” by the Communist
party to include the Marxist exposition in Part Three of
Native Son.25

Attaway and Wright delved into the black experience
with certain social consciousness. This social consciousness
helped to produce works that were brutally honest and
grounded in the social realism Of the day. Gwendolyn Brooks
shared this consciousness and sought to expose the world to
Chicago’s South Side which came to be known as

“Bronzeville.”

 

25Richard‘W’right, “I Tried to be a Communist,” in Atlantic
Mbnthly'(August 1944): 61-70.

125

Five Years after the appearance of Richard Wright’s
Native Son, Gwendolyn Brooks explored an unnamed street in
Bronzeville. In her first collection Of poetry A Street in

Bronzeville (1945), Brooks Offered both social criticism and
celebration of urban street life. Brooks “concentrated on
unheroic commonplace South Siders.”26 She was able to
address some Of the major social issues of her time (racial
injustice and the plight of women) indirectly by focusing on
these dispossessed residents.27
Understanding the world in which the residents existed
was essential in understanding their experiences. In Brooks'
work, a sense Of place was inextricably linked with
identity.28 She often made reference to real locations which
evoked Chicago’s South Side topography. Kenny J. Williams
made this comment on the urban world that Brooks examined:
This is not the Chicago of the elite, not the city
of spectacular boulevards and buildings. This is a
city of black streets and alleys, of Kitchenettes
and vacant lots. The American dream no longer
mattered to the people whose lives had so
consistently been empty that they Often were not
aware of its nightmarish quality. Brooks’
Bronzeville is symbolic of the impersonality of
the overcrowded ghetto generally ignored by white

Chicagoans caught in the daily activities of their
own lives.29

 

26Maria K. Mootry, “Down the Whirlwind of Good Rage: An
Introduction to Gwendolyn Brooks,” A Life Distilled:
GWendblyn.Brooks, Her.Poetry and Fiction, (Urbana: Uhiv; of
Illinois Press, 1987) 3.

2“’Ihid., 4.

“Ibid., 5.

29Kenny J. Williams, “The World of Satin-Legs, Mrs. Sallies

126

Brooks’ Bronzeville portrait speaks to the regionalism which
shaped Chicago’s literary history. This regionalism, along
with race and social consciousness shaped Brooks’ literary
development. Maria Mootry describes the significance of
region in Brooks’ career:
Thus as a regionalist, Brooks brought together a
remarkable sense of black folk culture and
American popular culture that affirmed black life
and also critiqued indirectly those forces that
limited black access to the American dream.30

The inhabitants of Brooks' Bronzeville “display the
pathos and frustrations of modern life in a ‘restricted’
neighborhood." 31 One of the more notable figures is
Satin-Legs Smith. Like many of his fellow residents, his
life is barren and limited. He is confined to his South
Side community and finds pleasure only in his Sunday rituals
of selecting outfits from his collection of highly styled
clothes, going to the movies and taking his girlfriend to
dinner at “Joe’s Eats."

One of Satin-Legs’ greatest joys is his collection of
flamboyant clothes in “the innards of his closet.” Brooks
describes the closet as a “vault”:

Whose glory is not diamonds, not pearls,
Not silver plate with just enough dull Shine.

But wonder-suits in yellow and in wine,
Sarcastic green and zebra-stripped cobalt.

 

and the Blackstone Rangers: The Restricted Chicago of

Gwendolyn Brooks." .A Life Distilled, 55.
3”Mootry, 6.

”Williams, 55.

127

All drapes. With shoulder padding that is wide

And cocky and determined as his pride;

Ballooning pants that taper off to ends

Scheduled to choke precisely.

Here are hats

Like bright umbrellas; and hysterical ties

Like narrow banners for some gathering war.32
Like Wright’s Jake Jackson, Satin-Legs’ identity and
self—esteem are partly based on his clothes, his material
possessions.

Satin-Legs also receives gratification from movies
where he can live vicariously through others. He joins in
“boo[ing]/the hero’s kiss, and . . . the heroine/whose ivory
and yellow it is sin for his eye to eat of.”33.After the
movie, there is Joe’s Eats where “You get your fish or
chicken on meat platters./With coleslaw, macaroni, candied
sweets/coffee and apple pie. You go out full.”3‘ These
moments of gratification seem to be central to Satin-Leg's
existence. He seems unaware Of his isolated community. As
Maria Mootry observes, Satin-Legs’ life is “the microcosmic
dramatization of thousands of black men, uprooted for one
reason or another from their southern origins, coping in the

neosegragated ambiance Of northern ghettos.”35

Although Satin—Legs Smith receives a “mock-heroic-epic

 

32Gwendolyn Brooks, “The Sundays of Satin-Legs Smith”, A
Street in.Bronzeville (New York: Harper and Brothers
Publishers, 1945), 24-30.

”mm.

3‘Ihid.

”Mootry, 1-16 .

128

treatment” Of his experiences, this does not mean that
Brooks neglected women.36 In fact, she described the impact
of the urban experience on both males and females equally.
As Beverly Guy-Sheftall points out, this was a significant
departure from her male contemporaries.37

In spite of the conditions Of their lives, Brooks’
Bronzeville women are able to transcend, if only
temporarily, the harsh realities. They are not completely
consumed by the poverty that engulfs them. They find
happiness in small, seemingly trivial things. Brooks' female
characters are diverse enough to “reveal the many facets,
complexities, and paradoxes of the urban black
experience.”38 In poems such as “Sadie and Maude,” Brooks
portrays contrasting views of life held by two sisters.
Sadie lived a very turbulent life and brought shame to her
family by bearing two illegitimate children. However, she
did live her life to the fullest capacity.

Sadie scraped life
With a fine-tooth comb.

She didn’t leave a tangle in.

Her comb found every strand.

Sadie was one Of the livingest chits
In all the land.39

 

36Mootry, “Down the Whirlwind of Good Rage," 5.
37BeverlyGuy-Sheftall, “The'Wemen of Bronzeville”,.A Life
Distilled, 153.

3°Ihid.

3QBrooks,.A Street in.Bronzeville, 14.

129

Sadie has “triumphed” because she “squeezed” joy out of life
in spite Of her other resources.‘0 Maud, on the other hand,
took a more “conventional path” and went to college.
However, at the end of the poem, she is alone and like a
“thin brown mouse.”‘1
As mentioned earlier, Brooks’ Bronzeville women find
pleasure in seemingly insignificant matters. In the poem
“When you have forgotten Sunday: the love story,” a woman
experiences great satisfaction from sleeping in on Sundays
and being with her mate. She remembers ordinary matters such
as how he reacted to interruptions during their lovemaking,
how long they stayed in bed, and what they had for dinner.
She describes the Sunday dinner with a certain fondness:
. .we finally went in to Sunday

dinner, That is to say, went across

the front room floor to the ink-

spotted table in the southwest corner

To Sunday dinner, which was always

chicken and noodles

Or chicken and rice

And salad and rye bread

and tea

And chocolate chip

cookies42
The detail in the description reveals the pleasure Of the
female narrator.

Through her female characters, Brooks grapples quite

effectively with intraracial strife; more specifically skin

 

“Ibid.
“Ibid.
‘zIbid. , 18-20.

130

color and hair texture. In poems such as “The Ballad of
Chocolate Mable” and “At the hairdresser’s” Brooks
dramatizes the plight of dark-skinned black women with
“kinky” hair. Beauty parlors play a significant role in the
Bronzeville world. As critic Arthur Davis points out:

The worship of “good” hair naturally
suggests the importance of beauty
parlors in Bronzeville. They tend to
become miracle-working shrines to which
the dark girl goes in search of beauty.
. . They knew that it is tough to be
“cut” from “chocolate” and to have
“boisterous” hair “in a land where
“white is right.” To be black is to
be rejected. . . ‘3

Brooks’ perspective as a black woman helped to reveal
certain facets of the black urban experience that were over-
looked by her male counterparts. The diversity of female
images illuminated the diversity and complexity of that
experience. Beverly Guy-Sheftall makes this insightful
comment on Brooks’ Bronzeville women:

Brooks’ poems present a more realistic View of the
diversity and complexity of black women than the
stereotypes(matriarch, whore, bitch, for
example)that have persisted in other literary
works by black and white artists alike. The lack
of uniformity in her portraits of black women
would contradict the motion that there is a
monolithic black woman.“

Brooks’ Bronzeville portraits were defined by her

social realism. This social realism defined the Chicago

 

‘RArthur Davis, “The Black-and-Tan Motif in the Poetry of
Gwendolyn Brook," college Language Association (Dec. 1962),
“Guy-Sheftall , 163 .

131

Renaissance. This social realism articulated social protest.
Like Wright and Attaway, Brooks illuminated the [specific]
racial injustice and inequality as well as [general] social
ills that plagued the nation as a whole; in particular, “the
complexity of an industrialized age characterized by swift
change, depersonalization, and war.”45

Brooks does depart from Wright and Attaway in her
protest. Her outlook is not as bleak as her male counter-
parts. As stated previously, Brooks presents glimmers of
hope as her characters delight in the small pleasures of
their lives. However, her protest is no less powerful or
profound.

Margaret Walker shared Brooks’ concern with giving her
characters or “folk” a certain dignity. Walker sought to
illustrate the enduring strength of common black folks and
to call on them to take action in their own liberation.
With her 1942 collection Of poetry For.My People, she
spoke directly to the black community with a militancy that
foreshadowed the Black Arts Movement of the 1960’s and
1970’s. The collection of poems uses history as a way of
defining the uniqueness of black culture. The black
community should draw strength from that history Walker

maintained.

 

‘5Houston.A. Baker, “The.Achievement of Gwendolyn Brooks”,
.A Lifb.Di$tilled, 23.

132

In describing African-American history, Walker delves
into folklore. She shared with Wright a passionate emphasis
on the Significance Of black folklore. The folklore is part
of a larger southern folk culture. In the Opening lines of
the title poem, Walker speaks to that culture:
For my people everywhere singing their slave
songs repeatedly: their dirges and their ditties
and their blues and jubilees, praying their
prayers nightly to an unknown god, bending their
knees humbly to an unseen power.

The poem goes on to become more militant with each stanza.

Walker speaks of the “needs” of black people:

For my people thronging 47th Street in Chicago and
Lenox Avenue in New York and Rampart Street in New
Orleans, lost disinherited dispossessed and happy
people filling the cabarets and taverns and other
people’s pockets needing bread and shoes and
milk and land and money and something-—something
all our own.‘
Walker is describing the plight of the masses of black
people. She is critical of the absence of the basic
necessities (food, clothing) in their lives. Life should
not be such a struggle for them. With the reference to
land, Walker is addressing the need for black people to
possess or own something of significant value; something

that will give them control of their lives.

The absence of this control of one’s destiny and plight

 

‘Gwalker, “For MQ'People," Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Nellie
Y. MoKay, eds. The Nerton.Anthology of African-American
Literature (New York:‘WTW3 Norton and Company, 1997), 1572.
"Ihid. , 1573.

133

is addressed in the next stanza:
For my people walking blindly spreading joy,
losing time being lazy, sleeping when hungry,
shouting when burdened, drinking when hopeless,
tied and shackled and tangled among themselves by
the unseen creatures who tower over us
omnisciently and laugh. . . .‘
Walker is speaking out against racism and its effects on the
black community. Black people are “shackled and tangled”
(overcrowded and trapped in segregated communities). The
“unseen creatures” (disfranchisement, Jim Crow) are an
oppressive presence that exists outside of the black
community but exerts a great deal of power over the lives Of
black people.
Walker is also critical of those institutions within
the community that supposedly foster unity, stability, and
comfort:
For my people blundering and groping and
floundering in the dark of churches and schools
and clubs and societies, associations and councils
and committee and conventions, distressed and
disturbed and deceived and devoured by money-
hungry glory-craving leeches preyed on by facile
force Of state and fad and novelty, by false
prophet and believer. . . .49

If black people are “blundering, groping and floundering”

then these institutions have obviously failed them. They

have also been severely exploited by political and religious

leaders and their movements (perhaps Marcus Garvey, Father

 

‘9 Ibid.
“mid.

134

Divine or the Nation of Islam).

Finally, in the last stanza, Walker passionately
exhorts her people to take action in order to bring about
serious change:

Let a new earth rise. Let another world be born.
Let a bloody peace be written in the sky. Let
a second generation full of courage issue forth;
let a people loving freedom come to growth. Let
a beauty full of healing and a strength of final
clenching be the pulsing in our spirits and our
blood. Let the martial songs be written, let the
dirges disap ear. Let a race of men now rise and
take control. 0
If black people are ever to be free of the constraints and
problems that plague their communities, they must “take
control" of their lives and their destiny as a people. This
militant call to freedom signified a dramatic shift from the
poetry of the Harlem Renaissance generation as James Young
points out:
The harshness of Margaret Walker’s words set her
apart from any of her female predecessors. But
Walker was Of a generation of writers who came of
age during bitter times, times which compelled
them to grapple with reality.51

While Margaret Walker and other members of the Chicago
Renaissance community grappled with the realities of race in
the aftermath Of the Great Depression, there was at least

one artist/member who sought to transcend race. Willard

Motley was one of a rare group of black writers who wrote

 

5°Ibid. , 1573.
51Young, Black Writers of the Thirties, 201.

135

“raceless” fiction. His 1947 novel Knock on Any Door is the
story of Nick Romano, an Italian-American boy who is
transformed by his environment into a criminal. The
overlong work describes in sometimes painful detail, how
society creates Nick and fosters his criminal activity.
Motley indicts society in general as well as the criminal
justice system and the city of Chicago. Motley’s work
belongs to the Chicago community because of its scathing
realism. In spite of its initial critical acclaim in the
1940’s, it has been roundly criticized for its likeness to
Wright’s Native Son. In fact, Robert Bone has stopped short
of accusing Motley of plagiarism:
The truth is that in its main outlines it leans
so heavily on Native Son as to border on
plagiarism. The chase, the speech of Nick’s
lawyer is simply Native Son stripped of racial
implications. The difference is that where
Wright’s treatment is condensed and selective,
Motley is detailed and exhaustive.52
The parallels between the novels are obvious. And
aesthetically, Motley’s work is a painfully monotonous read.
However, Motley deserves attention because he explored the
urbanization process and its destructive consequences. His
use of naturalism and his social realism places his work
within the Chicago Renaissance “orientation.”

This Chicago Renaissance community was not exclusive to

one generation of black writers. Arna Bontemps, a pivotal

 

52Bone, The Negro Novel in America, 178-80.

136

figure of the Harlem Renaissance, occupied a unique position
within this new, Chicago-based cultural outpouring. In
1935, Bontemps was attending graduate school at the
University of Chicago. Soon after his arrival to the city,
he met Richard Wright who was working on the Illinois
Writers’ Project. Wright introduced Bontemps to the South
Side Writers’ Group at one of their first meetings.53
Bontemps’ introduction to and association with this new
generation of black writers signified the transition from
the Harlem Renaissance orientation (primitivism) to the
Chicago Renaissance orientation (social realism). Robert
Bone makes this insightful comment:
Having spent some seven years in Harlem and as
many in Chicago, he {Bontemps} was uniquely
positioned to compare the focal points of Negro
self—expression. He was a participant in both
movements, and a living link between two
generations of black writers.5‘
Indeed, Bontemps commented on both movements in a 1950 essay
entitled “Famous WPA Authors”: “Chicago was definitely the
center of the second phase of Negro literary awakening . . .
Harlem got its renaissance in the middle twenties, centering
on the Opportunity contests and the Fifth Avenue Awards
Dinners. Ten years later Chicago reenacted it on WPA without

finger bowls but with increased power.”55

 

53Bone, “Richard‘Wright and the Chicago Renaissance,”
Gallaloo (Summer 1986): 446.

5‘Ibid. , 447.

55Arna Bontemps, “Famous WPA Authors,” Negro Digest (June

137

This “increased power” was demonstrated in Bontemps
1936 novel Black Thunder. The story is a vivid recount of an
aborted slave revolt in Virginia in 1800. It is an account
based on the historic event which involved a slave named
Gabriel Prosser. Bontemps drew heavily from court records of
the period.
This research helped to create the profound realism of
Bontemps’ portrait of the slave community. Indeed, critics
across the board have praised the novel for capturing the
language, attitudes, and dialogue of antebellum bondsmen and
women. Critic Lawrence W. Mazzeno articulates this praise
when he comments that
TOO often books such as this Offer little more
than political rhetoric disguised thinly as
fiction, and characterization is subordinated to
other aims. This is not the case in Black
Thunder; the characters, especially the black
people, appear to the reader in their own right,
and Bontemps achieves a level of realism with his
characters that is seldom reached in historical
chronicles.55

And Richard Wright, in a 1936 review of the work, credited

Bontemps with dealing directly with issues that had not

7

been touched upon by previous African-American novels.5

One of the central issues that Wright was referring to

 

1950): 46-47.

56Lawrence‘W’. Mazzeno, review of Black Thunder In
.Masterpieces of African-American Literature (New York:
Harper Collins Publishers, 1992), 58-59.

smwright, “A.Tale of Folk Courage," Partisan Review (April
1936): 31.

138

was Bontemps’ focus on the plight of the black downtrodden.
At the center of the novel is a call to freedom. Bontemps
implies throughout the work that although slavery had been
outlawed, the racism and oppresSion that permeated the slave
South still permeated 1936 America.58

Bontemps’ scathing social criticism placed him firmly
in league with his Chicago contemporaries. Because of his
participation in the Harlem Renaissance, he could be seen as
a “godfather” or “elder statesman” of the Chicago
Renaissance(although he was only Six years older than
Richard Wright). Symbolically, Black Thunder was an anchor
for the Chicago Renaissance. It was, as Wright pointed out,
one of the first published works of the period which
articulated the new wave of realism and social protest among
black writers.

However pivotal Black Thunder was at this time, its
publication does not take anything away from Wright’s role
as “chief spokesman” and leader Of the Chicago Renaissance.
In 1936, Wright was still formulating the main tenets of
what would become “Blueprint for Negro Writing.” However,
he had completed his first novel Lawd Today! and he was
organizing the South Side Writers’ Group. And finally,
Wright was much more prolific in the years to come than

Bontemps. Wright proved to be the “guiding spirit” of the

 

58Mazzeno , 59 .

139

Chicago Renaissance community.59

This Chicago Renaissance community was part of a new
generation Of black writers who had experienced the Great
Depression. This experience forced these writers to face
the realities of their times. The experience also helped to
shape a new orientation among these writers; an orientation
which said that art should be used to express and raise
social consciousness.

Langston Hughes was another transitional figure during
this period. Although he was renowned as a Harlem
Renaissance poet, Hughes did publish a novel of some
significance. In 1930, Net Without Laughter became “the
first major novel about the black experience in Chicago.”60
Hughes’ story of a young Midwestern boy coming of age while
working in a Chicago hotel was hailed by his contemporaries
and future scholars for its “saving grace of realism.” As
James Young points out, NOt Without Laughter was an
important novel “because it was one of the first by a black
writer in which the life of the common folk was examined on
its own terms, not for its humor or propaganda value.”61

Hughes had always celebrated the common folk in poetry.

This celebration soon turned to protest during the 1930’s.

 

59Bone, “Richard wright and the Chicago Renaissance,” 462.
6°IDarlene Clark Hine,‘William.Hine, and Stanley Harrold, The
African-American Odyssey, Vblume Tao (Upper Saddle River,
New Jersey: Prentice Hall Inc., 2000), 454.

61James Young, Black writers of the Thirties, 218-219.

140

During this period, Hughes, like many artists at the time,
began to feel that art should express social and political
consciousness. Hughes’ poetry had always reflected this
consciousness. In 1932, he visited Moscow and felt
comfortable and appreciated. His politics moved sharply to
the left although he never became a member of the Communist
party. However, his poetry did reflect party ideology.

Hughes did not lose touch with the folk in poetry but
there as a new emphasis on proletarian themes and heroes.
The most vivid example of this new orientation was
Scottsboro Limited, a poem-play dedicated to the black
youths on trial during the infamous Scottsboro case.
Throughout the poems, the boys are identified with
revolutionary figures from the past including John Brown,
Nat Turner, and Lenin.62

Hughes also addressed class conflict and exploitation
in “Scottsboro Limited.” The poem-play describes the
persecution of poor whites and blacks alike by “de rich
white folks.” Towards the end of the work, Hughes “imposes
the theme Of Communist sympathy with the black victims and
there is a triumphant unity with white workers as the boys
escape their bonds.”63

Ultimately, as Hughes assimilated Communist ideology,

 

“Ibid. ,174 .
53mm. , 175.

141

his work became stilted and superficial. Gradually, Hughes
moved to the political center but never lost the social and
political consciousness that shaped his work. Throughout the
1930's, “he concentrated almost exclusively on the
theater.”5‘ His most notable work of the period was a
miscegenation drama entitled Malatto, produced in 1935.

Never afraid to tackle tough subject matter, Hughes was
quite outspoken about what he felt black writers should be
doing in their art. At the peak of the Harlem Renaissance in
1926, Hughes wrote what many considered a manifesto on the
freedom of the black writer entitled “The Negro Artist and
the Racial Mountain.” In many respects it was a precursor to
Wright’s “Blueprint for Negro Writing.” The two essays are
also companion pieces.

Hughes Opens the essay by discussing what he calls the
“mountain” which stands in the way of true black art--”this
urge within the race toward whiteness.”65 Hughes is
attacking the sentiment among black artists which denies
racial identity and race consciousness in favor of
assimilationist aspirations. The culprit in helping to

develop this mentality, according to Hughes, is the black

 

6‘Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Nellie MoKay, eds., The Nerton
Anthology of African-American Literature (New York:‘WJW.
Norton and Company, 1997), 1253.

65Langston Hughes, “The Negro.Artist and the Racial
Mountain,” in The Nerton Anthology of African-American
Literature, 1267.

142

middle-class. These “respectable members of the Baptist
church” are engulfed in a white middle~class value system.
They are materialistic and they embrace a “white culture” of
integrated schools and white theaters and movies. By the
same token, they reject and scorn virtually anything
associated with black peOple.66
However, there are “the low-down folks, the so-called
common element, and they are the majority--may the Lord be
praised.”67 They “live on Seventh Street in Washington or
State Street in Chicago and they do not particularly care
whether they are like white folks or anybody else.”68 They
are the key to helping the black artist gain a racial
identity and consciousness. According to Hughes, they
furnish a wealth of color, distinctive material
for any artist because they still hold their own
individuality in the face of American
standardizations.69
The masses of African-Americans retain the “essence” of
black culture. Hughes then goes on to say that a truly
uninhibited black artist would come from these masses. Once
the artist emerges from this community, he or she Would have
a difficult journey in front of them:
The road for the serious black artist, then, who

would produce a racial art is most certainly rocky
and the mountain is high. Until recently he

 

“Ibid. , 1266.
5" Ibid.
“Ibid.
“Ibid.

143

received almost no encouragement for his work from
either white or colored people.7o

Hughes makes reference to Charles Chesnutt and Paul Laurence
Dunbar. He states that in spite Of the quality and cultural
relevance of their work, they were never taken seriously as
artists. Racism clouded the minds of American society and as
a result, these writers were seen as amusing oddities.
Hughes also makes reference to the Harlem Renaissance
of which he is a major figure:
The present vogue in things Negro, although it may
do as much harm as good for the budding colored
artist, has at least done this: it has brought him
forcibly to the attention of his own people among
whom for so long, unless the other race had
noticed him beforehand, he was a prophet with
little honor.71
Here, Hughes sees the Harlem Renaissance as a kind Of a
double-edged sword. Black artists are now receiving a great
deal Of attention but this is due largely to white interest
in their work. Black culture, black art, and black people
were now suddenly in vogue. Nevertheless, the black artist,
according to Hughes, was now being noticed by his/her
community.
Finally, Hughes makes clear the intent Of his
generation:
We younger Negro artists who create now intend to

express our individual dark-skinned selves without
fear or shame. We know we are beautiful. And ugly

 

7°Ibid. , 1269.
”mid.

144

too. We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as

we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain,

free within ourselves.72
Acknowledgment of the whole of black culture and race
consciousness will be the defining markers of this
generation of black artists. Black artists should embrace
their racial identity without reservation or fear Of
consequences. Once this is done, the black artist will
conquer this racial mountain.

Hughes’ essay and Wright’s “Blueprint for Negro
Writing” are companion pieces in that both conduct a
sometimes scathing self-examination of black cultural
thinking and practices. There is also a call for a cultural
self-reliance. Both men, in their attacks on the black
middle—class and white patronage, implore black artists to
think, speak, and write for themselves. There is also a
certain militancy in both works that spoke to the political
atmosphere of the respective periods. Hughes was going
against the grain Of the assimilationist/Americanness
sentiment of the Harlem Renaissance but he was still in line
with the post-World War I black militancy of the decade.
Wright incorporated the Marxist/Communist ideology that
helped to shape the 1930's.

The 1930’s was a decade that witnessed a new wave of

black political activism as more black thinkers and

 

721bid., 1271.

145

activists aligned themselves with the labor movement. During
this period there were some five hundred civil rights
organizations with various ideologies and methods. In 1936,
these organizations were brought together for the National
Negro Congress. During the same year, Hughes traveled to
Chicago to conduct research for a historical novel. He was
invited, along with Arna Bontemps and Richard Wright, to
speak on black history and culture at the final session Of
the Congress. Faith Berry describes the meeting between
Wright, Bontemps, and Hughes in her biography of Hughes:
In Chicago, Hughes made the acquaintance Of
Richard Wright, a young Mississippi-born black
writer, who had been secretary of the local John
Reed Club. He had impressed Hughes with “Joe Louis
Uncovers Dynamite,”a piece on the psychological
impact Of Joe Louis’s victory over a German
former world heavyweight champion Max Schmelling.
Wright had lectured on Hughes to the John Reed
Club, but the two writers had missed meeting the
year before in New York at the first American
Writers Congress; Wright had attended, but Hughes
had been unable to make the trip from Mexico. In
Chicago, mutual friends, including Arna Bontemps,
introduced them.73
Wright, like many young black writers of the time, regarded
Hughes as a hero, a giant in the creative community. Hughes
socialized with Wright and his WPA comrades during his
visits to Chicago. Like Bontemps, Hughes was excited about

this new generation of black writers.

Hughes often worked very closely with this new

 

73Faith Berry, Langston HUghes:.Befbre and.Beyond Harlem
(New York: Citadel Press, 1983), 245.

146

generation. For Gwendolyn Brooks(among others), he served as
a mentor, reviewer, and close friendn7‘ Brooks was a protege
of Hughes. He read and reviewed the poems that would make up
her 1945 collection A Street in Bronzeville.75 Hughes, like
Arna Bontemps, belonged to both the Harlem Renaissance and
the Chicago Renaissance. Although he was the poet laureate
of the Harlem Renaissance, his social, political, and
cultural thinking belonged to the Chicago Renaissance. His

work always exemplified social realism and protest.

 

“Ibid. , 322.
75Ibid.

147

CHAPTER SIX

CONCLUSION

When Richard Wright left America for Paris, France in
1947, it was an attempt to further distance himself from his
Mississippi past. This past was quite painful given its
racism and degradation. As he grew older and migrated to
Chicago and then New York, Wright found a different form Of
racism. Lynching and Jim Crow were replaced by police
brutality and a neosegregation which designated
African—Americans to slum areas. Wright began to feel that
America’s racism was too deeply rooted for him to ever be
truly free as a black man and an artist.

However painful the past may have been, it helped to
shape and define him as an artist and intellectual. During
the Chicago Renaissance years Richard Wright “emerged,”
developed and transformed from a struggling proletarian poet
to one of America’s premier authors with international
acclaim.1 During this period, Wright also moved beyond the

confines of strict literary activity and combined his

 

1The temm “emergence” as used by Keneth Kinnamon in his The
Emergence of Richard Wright (Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 1972).

148

interest in folklore and sociology to produce Twelve Million
Black Voices(194l). Four years later, he produced Black
Boy(1945) which many hailed as a masterpiece in
autobiography. And in the midst of this activity, he
Officially broke with the Communist party.

It is important to note that Wright was living and
working in New York during this period. This raises an
interesting query. How can a writer who left Chicago for New
York in 1937 be the central figure of a Chicago Renaissance
that took place roughly between 1935 and 1950? Robert Bone
provides this answer:

A partial answer lies in the fact to Chicago for
extended periods to visit family and friends, and
to do research for books and articles. And
again in the fact that his presence in New York
represented an outpost Of Chicago values. Shaped
in Chicago where he spent his young manhood,
Wright’s artistic imagination clung to its
shaping-place long after he moved to New York.2
While in New York, Wright retained a certain “Chicago
consciousness.” Chicago’s rich social, cultural, and
literary history no doubt helped to shape that
consciousness.

Another facet of Wright’s consciousness was Communist

ideology. During the Chicago Renaissance years, Wright grew

increasingly disillusioned and dissatisfied with the

Communist party until his departure in 1944. However, he

 

2Robert Bone, “Richard‘Wright and the Chicago Renaissance,”
Callaloo (Summer 1986): 449.

149

held on to Marxism. Wright postulated quite forcefully that
race and class were inextricably linked.

As Wright held on to Marxism, he also began to
experiment with existentialism as evident in the short story
“The Man Who Lived Underground.” Wright had always been
concerned with examining the human condition. He attempted
to move beyond race as he wrote about alienation and the
“outsider.” Although he certainly broadened his themes and
techniques, Wright never abandoned race. Perhaps this was
Wright’s concrete attempt to do what he implored black
writers to do in “Blueprint for Negro Writing” with regards
to black nationalism—-embracing and understanding it in
order to transcend it.

The 1937 essay was part of Wright’s emergence as
artist/intellectual. According to Keneth Kinnamon, this
emergence “was complete with the publication and favorable
reception of Native Son.”3 Shortly following this emergence,
Wright entered a new phase of his career. He began to
broaden his thinking and the scope of his writing. With the
publication of Twelve Million Black Voices in 1941, Wright
effectively assimilated elements which shaped and defined
his writing up to that point: folklore, Marxism, and
sociology. The book was a collection of photographs

designed to detail “The Folk History of the American Negro.”

 

3Kinnamon, The Emergence of Richard Wright, 153.

150

Wright provided the prose for the work.

The text is divided into four parts. Part One, entitled
Our Strange Birth, sketches the history of the
trans-Atlantic slave trade and the early years of black
enslavement in America. Wright eloquently describes the
effects of the slave trade on the lives of Africans who
would become Americans:

Captivity under Christendom blasted our lives,
disrupted our families, reached down into the
personalities of each one of us and destroyed the
very images and symbols which had guided our minds
and feelings in an effort to live. Our folkways
and folk tales, which had once given meaning and
sanction to our actions, faded from consciousness.
Our gods were dead and answered us no more. The
trauma of leaving our African home, the suffering
of the long middle passage, the thirst, the
hunger, the horrors Of the slave ship--all these
hollowed us out, numbed us, stripped us, and left
only physiological urges, the feelings Of fear and
fatigue.

Wright effectively sets the tone for the work with a lyrical
rendition of historical facts. Wright's style makes the
history of African—Americans organic.

Wright continues his prose in the second section
entitled Inheritors of Slavery. The section opens with a
provocative comment on the term “Negro”:

The word “Negro,” the term by which, orally or in
print, we black folk in the United States are

usually designated, is not really a name at all
nor a description, but a psychological island

 

‘Richard Wright, 12 Million Black Voices: A Folk History of
the Negro in the United States (New York: Viking Press,
1 941) , 15.

151

whose objective form is the most unanimous fiat in
all American history; a fiat which artificially
and arbitrarily defines, regulates, and limits in
scope of meaning the vital contours Of our lives,
and the lives of our children and our children’s
children.5
Wright provides a sociological analysis of the term “Negro.”
As mentioned earlier, his poetic style gives the analysis a
certain depth and emotionalism that engages the reader. The
reader hopefully understands the power of the word in the
lives of black people.

Language is not the only element that affects the lives
of black people in the United States. There is a distinctive
class structure which shapes and controls almost every facet
of black life:

In general there are three classes of men above
us: the Lords Of the Land--Operators Of the
plantations; the Bosses of the Buildings--the
owners Of industry; and the vast numbers of poor
white workers--our immediate competitors in the
daily struggle for bread. The Lords of the Land
hold sway over the plantations and over us; the
Bosses of the Buildings lend money and issue
orders to the Lords of the Land.
Wright’s Marxist analysis illuminates the racial hierarchy
as well as the class struggle which defines the social
position of blacks in American society. Wright makes it
clear that regardless of what region(the industrial North

or the agrarian South) blacks existed in, their daily lives

and their destiny were always in the hands of those outside

 

51bid. , 30.

152

their community. And Wright elaborates even more in the
following pages as he points out that “the economic and
political power of the South is not held in our hands; we
do not own banks, iron and steel mills, railroads, office
buildings, ships, wharves, or power plants.”

Wright shifts from a Marxist analysis to a serious
sociological treatment of the migration and urbanization
process in Part Three which is entitled Death on the City
Pavements. On the second page of the section, Wright
presents seemingly cold facts:

In 1890 there were 1,500,000 Of us black men and
women in the cities of the nation, both north and
south. In 1900 there were 2,000,000 of us. In 1920
there were 3,500,000 of us in cities of the nation
and we were still going, still leaving the land.
However, in the next paragraph Wright returns to an
evocative emotionalism:
We, who were landless upon the land; we, who
needed the ritual and guidance Of institutions to
hold our atomized lives together in lines of
purpose; we, who had our personalities blasted
with two hundred years of slavery and had been
turned loose to shift for ourselves--we were such
a folk as this when we moved into a world that
was destined to test all we were, that threw us
into the scales Of competition to weigh our
mettle.
Wright then describes the end of the journey as the
“landless upon the land” adjusting to a new reality. There
are problems with employment as “the gigantic American

companies will not employ our daughters in their offices as

clerks, bookkeepers, or stenographers” and “the engineering,

153

aviation, mechanical, and chemical schools close their doors
to our sons; the Bosses Of the Buildings decree that we must
be maids, porters, janitors, cooks, and general servants.”

Perhaps the most provocative and disturbing imagery is
Wright’s description of the new physical environment which
envelops the new migrants:

The kitchenette is our prison, our death sentence
without trial, the new form of mob violence that
assaults not only the lone individual, but all of
us, in its ceaseless attacks. The kitchenette,
with its filth and foul air, with its one toilet
for thirty or more tenants, kills our black babies
so fast that in many cities twice as many Of them
die as white babies.
The kitchenette scatters death so widely among us
that our death rate exceeds our birth rate, and if
it were not for the trains and autos bringing us
daily into the city from the plantations, we black
folks who dwell in northern cities would die out
entirely over the course of a few years.
Although hailed as the “Promised Land,” the urban north
proves to be just as destructive as, if not more destructive
than, the agrarian Jim Crow south. Wright’s description is
graphic and angry as he weaves together statistical data and
harsh reality.

It is this synthesis of sociology, history, Marxism,
and prose that gives 12 Million Black Voices its power. This
synthesis also demonstrates Wright’s continued growth as
artist/intellectual. In the foreword to the work, Wright

Speaks of the influence of numerous disciplines in the

making of the text with this statement: “The majority of the

154

concepts and interpretations upon which I have relied most
heavily in assembling and writing of this text came from
The Negro Family in the United States by E. Franklin
Frazier; History of the American Negro People, 1619-1918 by
Elizabeth Lawson; “Urbanism as a Way of Life” from the
American JOurnal of Sociology Volume XLIV, Number 1, July
1938 by Louis Wirth; and Black Workers and the New Unions
by Horace R. Cayton and George S. Mitchell.”

Wright’s exploration of the black experience was part
of a larger exploration Of the American experience and
ultimately the human condition itself. Between the
publication Of 12.Million Black Voices and his pivotal 1945
autobiography Black Boy, “Wright wrote three significant
pieces: “The Man Who Lived Underground,” “I Tried to be a
Communist,” and the introduction to BlackMetropolis.”6

In the short story “The Man Who Lived Underground,”
Wright was attempting to move beyond race—specific themes.
It began as a 150 page manuscript about Fred Daniels, a
black servant. Like Native Son, it was a novel divided into
three sections. In the first section, Daniels is falsely
accused of murder and subsequently interrogated and beaten
by the police. In the second section, Daniels escapes from
the police and slips into a manhole. Daniels’ experience in

the manhole comprises the third section of the novel.

 

6walker, Daemonic Genius, 173.

155

When Wright submitted the novel to Harper, “it was
rejected for reasons that have not been made clear.”7 The
third section was eventually converted into a short story

and published in 1944 in an anthology entitled Cross

Section. The action takes place in a surreal, subterranean

world where Fred “sees, not reality in reverse, but the

reverse of reality.”8 He also became a “spectator freed from

himself and invisible.”9

Wright derived his concept of the underground man from

Dostoevski’s NOtes From Uhderground. Margaret Walker makes

these insightful comments:
Wright’s underground man is the marginal man,
considered by society as a zero, a nothing. For
Wright, the marginal man is the black man, and
his story is of a man in flight from the police,
who accidentally finds an underground world.
Psychologically and philosophically the
underground man has deep implications for modern
man especially for the black man, the marginal
man in society. More than anything else, “The Man
Who Lived Underground” links Native Son to Black
Boy and helps to establish Wright as a fiction
writer of ideas.10

As Walker points out, Wright was ever expanding, growing,

and developing as an artist/intellectual. The influence of

Dostoevski and existentialism speaks to Wright’s constant,

almost obsessive absorption Of knowledge from a wide array

 

7Miche1 Fabre, The Unfinished Quest of'Richard wright (New
York:‘William.Morrow and Co., 1973), 232.

aIbid., 239-241.

9Ihid.

10walker, Daemonic Genius, 174-175.

156

of sources.
Another important piece of Wright’s is his very public
announcement of his withdrawal from the Communist party “I
Tried to be a Communist.” In his diatribe against the party,
Wright contends that the party was fervently
anti-intellectual. They were suspicious of intellectuals.
Intellectuals were considered elitist. Wright also protested
the party’s strict control over writers and their art. The
party believed that art should be used to advance the party
line. They often used and exploited racial situations to
their own ends.11 Margaret Walker makes this provocative
statement:
Perhaps his greatest difference with the party was
in ideology. Wright believed that Trotsky and
Lenin were the grand old men of the Russian
Revolution, not the nationalist Stalin, who was
really a party functionary and bureaucrat. Wright
joined the Communist Party because he believed in
world revolution, particularly as the correct
solution for the American black man, and he left
when he felt that the revolution was not
forthcoming.12

Wright maintained that, in general, the party “ceased to

be an agent of social change” and they were intolerant Of

new ideas and often self-promoting.13

Although disillusioned with the Communist Party, Wright

was not deeply distracted. He remained prolific. With

 

11Wright, “I Tried to be a Communist," Atlantic Monthly
(August 1944): 61-70.

12Walker, 177.

13Wright, “I Tried to be a Communist," 61-70.

157

the success and notoriety he achieved with Native Son,
Wright “became one of the most sought after authors in the

”14

country. Indeed he wrote numerous introductions to books

by fellow writers including J. Saunders Redding and Nelson
Algren.15
Wright’s collaboration with Drake and Cayton was an
outgrowth of his relationship with Cayton and the Chicago
School of Urban Sociology. Cayton’s research served as
the theoretical introduction for Wright’s 12.Million
Black Voices. Wrights’s introduction to Black Metropolis
demonstrates his prowess as a scholar. Although it was
an introduction to a longer work, it was an entity unto
itself. It contains quotations of poetry from Wright’s
personal favorites: Shakespeare, Phillis Wheatly, Claude
McKay and Vachel Lindsay.
Wright also “successfully lectures the reader on how
he/she should read this book, what it means in urban
sociology, and its significance for black people and urban

culture.”16

He acknowledges the impact of Cayton’s research
on 12 Million Black Voices, Native Son, Uhcle Tom’s
Children, and Black Boy. Most importantly, this

introduction reveals Wright’s “intense and avid interest

in reading books of social science and literature, his

 

“Walker, 180.
15Ibid.
151bid., 186.

158

scholarly ambitions, his tremendous interest in knowledge,
his pride in being a self-educated man, and his fundamental-
mental nature as a intellectual.”17

After this pivotal introduction and years Of looking
outward, Wright turned inward and began to assess the

significance of his life.18

In his autobiography Black Boy,
Wright examines his formative years in the Jim Crow south.
It has been argued that most of Wright’s fiction was
autobiographical in one form or another. However, this was
a more “Open” attempt to describe his life experience.
Written in the form of a novel, the work describes the
ordeal of being black in a white-dominated south. The crux
of the work is Wright’s struggle for self-esteem, identity
and his quest to discover how to “live in a world in which
one’s mind and perceptions meant nothing and authority and
tradition meant everything.”19 This quest was hindered by a
dysfunctional family and a searing racism that permeated his
environment.
In Chapter Five Wright describes his home life which
helped to shape his views on religion (among other things):
There were more violent quarrels in our deeply
religious home than in the home of a gangster,

a burglar, or a prostitute, a fact which I used
to hint gently to Granny and which did my course

 

1"Ihid., 187.

“Ibid.

19Wright, Black Boy: A Record of Childhood and Youth (New
York: Harper, 1945), 144.

159

no good. Granny bore the standard for God, but
she was always fighting. I, too, fought; but I
fought because I felt I had to keep from being
crushed, to fend Off continuous attack. But
Granny and Aunt Addie quarreled and fought not
only with me, but with each other over minor
points of religious doctrine, or over some
imagined infraction of what they chose to call
their moral code. Whenever I found religion in
my life I found strife, the attempt of one
individual or group to rule another in the name of
God.2°

The strife that Wright witnesses teaches him that religion
and religious doctrine are tools of manipulation and help to
create hostility instead Of creating “The peace that passes
understanding.”

In addition to religion, Wright also discovers the
meaning of “place” in his life. He discusses the
significance of his southern environment during the fallout
over his first short story “The Voodoo of Hell’s Half-Acre”:

In the end I was so angry that I returned to

talk about the story. From nO quarter, with the
exception of the Negro newspaper editor, had
there come a single encouraging word. Had I been
conscious of the full extent to which I was
pushing against the current of my environment, I
would have been frightened altogether out of my
attempts at writing.

Wright further states:

I dreamed of going north and writing books,
novels. The North symbolized to me all that I had
not felt and seen; it had no relation whatever

to what actually existed. Yet, by imagining a
place where everything was possible, I kept alive
in me.

 

2°Ihid., 119.
211hic1., 147.

160

Wright learns that his attempt at creativity is dangerous
for him socially in his southern home. He also came to
understand the power of the written word. This written word
could elicit profoundly strong emotions from everyone within
his community. The principal (among others) wanted to know
why he had used the word “hell.” Wright felt the “he had
committed a crime.” Wright observes quite accurately that
he “lived in a country in which the aspirations of black
people were limited, marked off.”22 The North seemed to be
his salvation. It was, at least symbolically, a place
where virtually anything was possible.
Wright continues his discussion of “place” with this
statement:
I was building up in me a dream in which the
entire educational system of the South had been
rigged to stifle. I was feeling the very thing
that the state of Mississippi had spent millions
of dollars to make sure that I would never feel;
I was becoming aware of the thing that the Jim
Crow laws had been drafted to and passed to keep
out of my consciousness; I was acting on impulses
that he southern senators in the nation’s capital
had striven to keep out of Negro life; I was
beginning to dream the dreams that the state had
said were wrong, that the schools had said were
taboo.23
Here, Wright is describing the development of his sense of

self and the fact that he could be and do more than his

environment would allow. He has aspirations that could

 

22Ihid. , 146
23Ihid.

161

take him out of the south. Equally important is the
development of Wright’s social consciousness. He is
acutely aware of the forces around him that affect his life
and black folks around him.

This new social consciousness allows him to “see” how
other black southern boys are affected by the harshness of
the south:

I began to marvel at how smoothly the black boys
acted out the roles that the white race had mapped
out for them. Most of them were not conscious of
living a special, separate, stunted way of life.
Yet I knew that in some period of their grow-
ing up there had been developed in them a
delicate, sensitive controlling mechanism that
Shut off their minds and emotions from all the
white race had said was taboo.2‘
Wright’s consciousness creates a distance between him and
his peers as well as his experiences. He is an Observer.
He is able to analyze these experiences with a certain
depth.

The distance just mentioned became more pronounced
as Wright grew Older. Finally, at the age of seventeen,
Wright has an epiphany after recalling an altercation with
his uncle:

It was a flash of insight which revealed to me
the true nature of my relations with my family,
an insight which altered the entire course of my
life. I was now definitely decided upon leaving
my home. My life was falling to pieces and I

was acutely aware of it. I was poised for flight,
but I was waiting for some event, some word,

 

2‘Ihid. , 172.

162

some act, some circumstance to furnish the
impetus.25

Wright grew more and more alienated from his family and
his peers and he did leave his Mississippi home. The
work ends in the year 1925, with a seventeen-year-old
Wright bound for Chicago by way of Memphis, Tennessee.
Black Boy has Often been compared to Frederick

Douglass’ Narrative and The Autobiography of Benjamin

Franklin because it followed the stock pattern of the

self—made man. Wright did educate himself and fled from

an oppressive environment. Black Boy is also a distinct

coming—of-age story. Margaret Walker makes this comment:
It is a Bildungs-roman. It is in the great
American tradition of Mark Twain’s Huck Finn or
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and like the
contemporary stories Catcher in the Rye and Lord
of the Flies it is also a story of adolescent evil
and initiation. Instead of sexual initiation into
manhood or puberty, however, all Wright’s boys are
initiated into manhood through racial violence.26

The reader comes to understand how Wright was shaped

emotionally, psychologically, socially and culturally. His

childhood and adolescent development were, as mentioned

earlier, permeated with various forms Of Oppression.

Racial oppression us at the heart of Wright’s story.

When Wright described his personal experience, he was

describing the collective experience of black southerners.

 

251hid. , 152 .
“Walker, 188-89.

163

As critic Thomas Becknell points out, “he strove for an
objectivity that would show the environmental forces
determining the black experience in the South.”27 In this
sense, Black Boy can be seen as a work of sociological
significance.28

The sociological significance of Black Boy can be seen
in the majority of Wright’s work. Throughout his career,
Wright wore many hats: poet, propagandist, short story
writer, novelist, essayist, newspaper writer. The diversity
and prolific nature of Wright’s endeavors spoke to his
never-ending “quest” of liberating social consciousness.29

The Chicago Renaissance years witnessed the early
stages and full development Of his quest. Between the
publication of “Blueprint for Negro Writing” in 1937 and his
self-imposed exile to Paris in 1946, Wright produced the
most profound and provocative work of his career. Indeed,
critics generally agree that “Wright’s career as a serious
artist effectively ended in 1946.”3°.Although he remained
prolific during the Paris years, critics contend that his

work lost its power and resonance as it became increasingly

 

27Thomas Becknell,.Masterpieces of African-American
Literature (New York: Harper Collins, 1992), 54-56.
2"mid.

29Michel Fabre, The unfinished Quest of Richard Wright,
xviii.

3°Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Nellie Y. MeKay, eds., The
Nerton Anthology of AfricancAmerican Literature (New York:
W.W. Norton and Co., 1997) , 1379.

164

abstract.31

Wright’s creative prowess may have taken a “downward
spiral,”_but the driving force behind his writing was his
activism. He was constantly drawing attention to the issues
of race, class, and the human condition. During the Chicago
Renaissance, Wright sought to transform the nature of black
writing; to make it an instrument of social consciousness

and social change.

 

311bid.

165

WORKS CITED

Attaway, William. Blood on the Forge. New York: Doubleday,
1941.

Baker, Houston A. “The Achievement of Gwendolyn Brooks,” In
A Life Distilled: Gwendolyn Brooks, Her Poetry and
Fiction, ed. Maria K. Mootry and Gary Smith, 21-29.
Urbana and Chicago: University Of Illinois Press,
1987.

Baym, Nina and others, eds. The Norton Anthology of American
Literature, 3rd ed. New York: W.W. Norton and Company,
1989.

Becknell, Thomas. “Black Boy-Richard Wright.” In
.Masterpieces Of African—American Literature, ed. Frank
Magill, 53-56. New York: Harper Collins, 1992.

Berry, Faith. Langston Hughes: Before and Beyond Harlem. New
York: Citadel Press, 1983.

Bone, Robert. The Negro NOvel in America. New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1965.

. “Richard Wright and the Chicago Renaissance.”
Callaloo (Summer 1986): 446-468.

Bontemps, Arna. Black Thunder. New York: The Macmillan
Company, 1936.

“Famous WPA Authors.” Negro Digest (June 1950):
46-47.

Brignano, Russell Carl. Richard wright: An Introduction to
the Man and His Works. Pittsburgh: University of
Pittsburgh Press, 1970.

Brooks, Gwendolyn. A Street in Bronzeville. New York: Harper
and Brothers Publishers, 1945.

Cappetti, Carla. writing Chicago:.MOdernism, Ethnography,
and the NOvel. New York: Columbia University Press,
1993.

Davis, Arthur. “The Black-and-Tan Motif in the Poetry of
Gwendolyn Brooks." College Language Association

166

(December 1962): 90-97.

Fabre, Michel. The Uhfinished Quest of Richard Wright. New
York: William Morrow and Company, 1973.

Grossman, James. Land Of HOpe: Chicago, Black Southerners,
and the Great Migration. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1989.

Hine, Darlene Clark, William Hine, and Stanely Harrold. The
African-American Odyssey, Volume Two. New Jersey:
Prentice Hall Inc., 2000.

Huggins, Nathan. Harlem Renaissance. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1971.

Kinnamon, Keneth. The Emergence of Richard wright. Chicago:
University of Illinois Press, 1972.

Locke, Alain. The New Negro: An Interpretation. New York:
Albert and Charles Boni, 1925.

Margolies, Edward. The Art of Richard wright. Carbondale:
Southern Illinois University Press, 1969.

Mazzeno, Lawrence W. “Black Thunder-Arna Bontemps,” In
.Masterpieces of African-American Literature, ed. Frank
Magill, 58-60. New York: Harper Collins Publishers,
1992.

McCall, Dan. “The Social Significance of Bigger Thomas,” In
Richard wright’s Native Son: A Critical Handbook, ed.
Richard Abcarian, 182-193. Belmont, California:
Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1970.

McKay, Claude. Home to Harlem. New York: Harper and Bros.,
1928.

. Banjo. New York: Harper and Bros., 1929.
. Banana Bottom. New York: Harper and Bros., 1933.
Miller, Eugene. Voice of a Native Son: The Poetics of
Richard Wright. Jackson, Mississippi: University Press

of Mississippi, 1990.

Mootry, Maria K. “Down the Whirlwind of Good Rage: An
Introduction to Gwendolyn Brooks,” In A Life
Distilled: Gwendolyn Brooks, Her Poetry and Fiction,

167

ed. Maria K. Mootry and Gary Smith, 1—17. Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1987.

Singh, Amrijit. The NOvels Of the Harlem Renaissance: Twelve
Black Writers, 1923-1933. University Park:
Pennsylvania St. University Press, 1976.

Waldron, Edward. “William Attaway’s Blood on the Forge: The
Death Of the Blues,” In Negro American Literature
Forum (Summer 1976): 58-60.

Walker, Margaret. “For My People,” In For My People. New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1942.

Richard Wright: Daemonic Genius. New York: Warner
Books, 1988.

Williams, Kenny J. “The World of Satin-Legs, Mrs. Sallie and
the Blackstone Rangers: The Restricted Chicago of
Gwendolyn Brooks,” In A Life Distilled: Gwendolyn
Brooks, Her Poetry, And Fiction, ed. Maria K. Mootry

and Gary Smith, 47-70. Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 1987.

Wright, Richard. “Negro Writers Launch Literary Quarterly.”
Daily Worker, (June 1937): 7.

.“Blueprint for Negro Writing.” New Challenge (Fall
1937): 53-65.

Native Son. New York: Harper, 1940.

. Twelve Million Black Voices: A Folk History of the

Negro in the United States. New York: Viking Press,
1941.

. “I Tried to be a Communist.” Atlantic MOnthly
(August 1944): 61-70.

. “Introduction.” In Horace Cayton and St. Clair

Drake, Black Metropolis. New York: Harcourt Brace,
1945.

. Black Boy: A Record of Childhood and Youth. New
York: Harper, 1945.

Lawd Today! Boston: Northeastern University Press,
1963.

Young, James. Black Writers of the Thirties. Baton Rouge:

168

Louisiana State University Press, 1973.

169

CHIGRN STATE UNIV.

IIHIWIIHHIII]011ml] [HIIIBIIHIIHSNLIHI