Keeping Up is Knowing Your History: Richard Wright

It is very important that as African Americans we know and understand our past in order for us to truly understand where we are headed in the future....

Richard Wright (Photo taken from ArtsJournal)

Today's History Lesson is: Richard Wright!

Today in history, September 4th, 1908, Richard Wright was born. Wright is a famous writer, who was often called an American literary titan, and became the benchmark for African American writers. A few of Wright's literary achievements include:

1. Uncle Tom's Children (1938)

Explores the harsh reality of surviving racism in the American South.

2. Native Son (1940)

In the novel, a man name Bigger Thomas, poor and uneducated, takes a small job with a rich white family. When the daughter ignored the social rules of a white woman and black man, Thomas becomes afraid and accidentally kills her. The main objective becomes trying to get Bigger Thomas from facing the death penalty. Wright says that racism in American causes black man to do things like this all of the time.

Today we say Happy Birthday Richard Wright and thanks for helping us "Keep Up"

Also Happy Birthday Beyonce Knowles- September 4th, 1981


-Keep Up and pass this along for others to do the same!

(Sources: http://www.blackfacts.com/ and African American History for Dummies by Ronda Racha Penrice)