Richard Wright was born in 1908 in Mississippi to a sharecropper father and schoolteacher mother. Poverty forced the family to move frequently, including to Memphis and Jackson. Wright showed an early talent for writing and had his first story published at age 16. He worked menial jobs and read widely before moving to Chicago in 1927. There, he became involved in communist politics and continued writing and publishing stories. He eventually moved to New York, where he wrote his acclaimed novel Native Son in 1940, chronicling the story of an African American man accused of murder. Wright later broke with the Communist Party and moved to Paris in 1946, where he continued writing until his death in 1960.

1. Richard Wright