The Fight

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The Fight

Richard Wright wrote controversial novels, short stories and non-fiction. Born on September 4, 1908 and then later on in life he passed on November 28, 1960. Wright was born on the Rucker Plantation in Roxie, Mississippi. He was the first of two sons to Ella Wilson. At the age of fifteen, Wright wrote his first story, "The Voodoo of Hell's Half-Acre". It was published in Southern Register, a local black newspaper. Then in 1923, Wright excelled in grade school and was made class valedictorian of Smith Robertson Junior High School. Determined not to be called an Uncle Tom, he refused to deliver the assistant principal's carefully prepared valedictory address that would not offend the white school officials and finally convinced the black administrators to let him read a compromised version of what he had written. In September of the same year, Wright registered for Mathematics, English, and History courses at the new Lanier High School in Jackson, but had to stop attending classes after a few weeks of irregular attendance because he needed to earn money for family expenses. His childhood in Memphis and Mississippi shaped his lasting impressions of American racism. Wright moved to Chicago in 1927. After finally securing employment as a postal clerk, he read other writers and studied their styles during his time off. When his job at the post office was eliminated by the Great Depression, he was forced to go on relief in 1931. By 1935, Wright had completed his first novel, Cesspool, published as "Lawd Today" 1963, and in January 1936 his story "Big Boy Leaves Home" was accepted for publication in New Caravan. In February, Wright began working with the National Negro Congress, and in April he chaired the South Side Writers Group, whose membership included Arna Bontemps and Margaret Walker. While Wright was at first pleased by positive relations with white Communists in Chicago, he was later humiliated in New York City by some who rescinded an offer to find housing for Wright because of his race. To make matters worse, some black Communists denounced the articulate, polished Wright as a bourgeois intellectual, assuming he was well educated and overly assimilated into white society. However, he was largely auto-didactic, having been forced to end his public education after the completion of grammar school.

In 1937, Richard Wright moved to New York, where he forged new ties with Communist Party members there after getting established. He worked on the WPA Writers' Project guidebook to the city, New York Panorama in the year of 1938 and wrote the book's essay on Harlem. Wright became the Harlem editor of the Daily Worker. After Wright received the Story magazine prize in early 1938, he shelved his manuscript of Lawd Today and dismissed his literary agent, John Troustine. He hired Paul Reynolds, the well-known agent of Paul Laurence Dunbar, to represent him. Meanwhile, the Story Press offered Harper all of Wright's prize-entry stories for a book, and Harper agreed to publish them. Wright gained national attention for the collection of four short stories titled Uncle Tom's Children in 1938. He based some stories on lynching in the Deep South. The publication and favorable reception of Uncle Tom's Children improved Wright's status with the Communist party and enabled him to establish a reasonable degree of financial stability. In July 1940 he went to Chicago to do research for the text for a folk history of blacks to accompany photographs selected by Edwin Rosskam. While in Chicago he visited the American Negro Exhibition with Langston Hughes, Arna Bontemps and Claude McKay. Wright's semi-autobiographical Black Boy 1945 described his early life from Roxie through his move to Chicago, his clashes with his Seventh-day Adventist family, his troubles with white employers and social isolation. American Hunger, published posthumously in 1977, was originally intended as the second volume of Black Boy. This book detailed Wright's involvement with the John Reed Clubs and the Communist Party. The book implied he left earlier, but his withdrawal was not publicized until 1944.

Wright moved to Paris in 1946, and became a permanent American expatriate. In Paris, Wright had became friends with Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. His Existentialist phase was depicted in his second novel, The Outsider in 1953, which described an African-American character's involvement with the Communist Party in New York. After becoming a French citizen, Wright published a minor novel titled "Savage Holiday". Then began to travel across the continent of Europe to Asia and into Africa. His experiences were the basis of numerous works nonfiction works. One was titled "Black Power" which was published in the year 1954. It was basically a commentary of the emerging nations of Africa. In 1949 Wright contributed to the anti-communist anthology The God That Failed his essay had been published in the Atlantic Monthly three years earlier and was derived from the unpublished portion of Black Boy. He was invited to join the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which he rejected, correctly suspecting that it had connections with the CIA. The CIA and FBI had Wright under surveillance starting in 1943. Due to McCarthyism, later on Wright was blacklisted by the Hollywood movie studio executives in the 1950s. Wright then starred as the teenager Bigger Thomas in an Argentinian film version of Native Son in the year of 1950. In 1955 Wright visited Indonesia for the Bandung Conference and recorded his observations in The Color Curtain: A Report on the Bandung Conference. Wright was upbeat about the possibilities posed by this meeting between recently oppressed nations.

Richard Wright's "The Fight" was about a young boy at a new school. He was quit nervous about his first day and how him and the other boys would it it off. The day was going by quickly. Then the lunch bell ranged. As he was in the school yard a handful of boys approached Wright but only one spoke to him. The boy asked Wright "Where do you come from?" Wright responded "from Jackson". Then the boy asked "Why do they make such ugly people in Jackson?" The boys referred to the looks of people in Jackson in order to start something. So as the conversation developed it turned into a angry dispute. Wright wasn't scared at all. He felt as if this would a new start for him. He felt as if it was a test. For the boys to know who he were. So he punched the boy in his face. This led to them fighting. Wright compared his fighting style to a tiger. Wright felt as if passing in school meant a fight. Which wasn't really a fight because the crowd had gotten between them. So it was broken up. The fight turned out to be a draw. Richard was afraid of the bullies because he had confidence in himself.Then the rest of the school day went by and at the end of the day, Richard was looking for the boys after school. But they were no where to be found. On his way home, Richard had came across a ring that he would use in his next fight. But to his surprise the word had gotten out that he a ring with the diamond missing and the boys didn't bather him again.

Wright reaction to the situation was unexpected because I thought he were going to back down from the group of boys. But to my surprise he didn't. I agree with Wright because I wouldn't have let nobody talk about me or try to disrespect for in front of a large amount of people. Yet alone trying to intimidate me. If this were me in this situation I would've reacted the same way but a little different. I wouldn't have let that conversation go too far. Because it was obvious of what the boy was trying to do. Reading this story had made me realize that I was once a victim of a situation similar to this. I was in the sixth grade. I attened Booker T. Washington. A class mate of mine was a African boy named Amara thought he could constantly talk about me and bring my mother into it. So one day while in class he was trying to put on a show. Something I was trying to avoid. But I couldn't control myself anymore. The teacher left the room and when the door closed after her, I punched him in the face. Which led to us fighting in the classroom. My peers couldn't believe that I was fighting. I couldn't control myself. I was so frustrated and tired of him running his mouth. They thought I would let him continue talking junk. But I didn't. I was punching him in his face as he was trying to curl his face into his stomach. Which wasn't working quit enough for him because my hits were still landing as he made the attempt to protect himself. One of my classmates named Davonte was standing there laughing the entire time while my other classmate Kendra was yelling "James cant fight". Clearly she must had been blind, because she wasn't seeing what I was seeing. Davonte was yelling out "Yeah James beat him up. Then another student said that my teacher Ms. Cabrera was coming" so I stopped fighting. She walked back into the classroom asking "What happened ?" I responded swiftly with "Nothing", while Davonte said "James and Amara had a fight". I looked at him with a evil grin and said "Be quiet". Davonte started to laugh. Then the class resumed working. After that situation I felt as if so much aggrevation was relieved from my body. I felt that I could have gone about the situation another way. But when you're tired of something what can you do ? My friends respected me much more and conversed with me even more. I didn't feel a change yet. But once my sister found out about me fighting she was happy but mad because I have gotten suspended if a teacher saw what was happening. At the end of the day I felt as if the fight was unnecessary but he had it coming to him at the end of the day. Me and Richard had the same thing in mind. We weren't going to let anybody try to intimidate us or make us feel uncomfortable.