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Doris Dompreh Professor Ann Vigo English 102 08/04/03 Richard Wright: A fight for equality Life in the 1900’s was oppressive for poor black people in the south. Under the Jim Crow laws, blacks were separated from whites and lived in the most destitute areas in the nation. In addition, they were denied all opportunities for advancement. Black Boy a novel by Richard Wright gives a vivid insight into the miserable lives of black people. This book is the biography of the author himself. Feeling indignant toward the treatment of his race, he decided to use words as power to fight injustice. Wright was born on September 4 1908 on Rucker’s plantation, about twenty miles east of Natchez, Mississippi. He was the first child of Nathaniel Wright, an illiterate sharecropper and Ella Wilson, a schoolteacher. They lived together as a family until his father left the family to live with another woman. Richard’s mother was forced to work and feed two children. She worked menial jobs trying to make ends meet. She took a job as a cook for a white family. Sometimes she the mother brought the children to her job. When she serves dinner to her employer, young and hungry Richard would stay in a corner and watch the white people eat. He asks himself “why could I not eat when I was hungry?
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