Portal:Seventh-day Adventist Church/Selected biography/5

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Richard Nathaniel Wright (September 4, 1908 – November 28, 1960) was an American author of powerful, sometimes controversial novels, short stories and non-fiction, informed by his status as a gifted but often discriminated against African-American.

Wright, the grandson of slaves, was born on a plantation in Roxie, Mississippi, a tiny town located about 22 miles east of Natchez, in Franklin County.

Wright's family soon moved to Memphis, Tennessee. While in Memphis, his father Nathaniel, a former sharecropper, abandoned them. Wright, his brother, and mother soon moved to Jackson, Mississippi, to live with relatives. In Jackson, Wright grew up and attended public high school.

At the age of fifteen, Wright penned his first story, 'The Voodoo of Hell's Half-Acre'. It was published in Southern Register, a local black newspaper. Here, he formed some lasting impressions of American racism before moving back to Memphis in 1927.