Richard Wright

Kurt Sutula
PD 4
5/18/02


Biography of Richard Wright:

In 1908 Richard Nathaniel Wright was born on September 4 on Rucker's Plantation, some twenty miles east of Natchez, Mississippi, the first child of Nathaniel Wright, a sharecropper, and Ella Wilson Wright, a schoolteacher.
In 1910 his brother Leon Alan Wright born on September 24. In 1911-1912 Ella Wright leaves the farm with her children and goes to Natchez to live with her family. Richard accidentally sets house of his grandparents, the Wilsons, on fire. In 1913-1914 Nathaniel and Ella move with their children to Memphis. Nathaniel leaves his family to live with another woman.
In 1915-1916 Richard enters school at the Howe Institute, Memphis, in September. Ella becomes ill and the children are placed in an orphanage for a short time. After Richard spends the summer in Jackson, Mississippi, with his maternal grandpa...