Encyclopedia

This interactive encyclopedia offers teachers and students access to terms, people, and events related to the history of Slavery in America. Many entries include reference material and some of the biographies on prominent figures contain suggestions for teaching as well as links to related sections of this site. The encyclopedia will continue to grow throughout the course of this project.

Walker, Madame C. J.: (1867-1919) A St. Louis laundress who grew up in Mississippi as the impoverished daughter of slaves, she developed the first commercially successful hair-straightening process, known as the "Walker System." By 1910, her company employed over three thousand people, and she was probably the first African-American woman to become a millionaire. Her success typified a common aspect of the Jim Crow era: most wealthy blacks made their fortunes servicing needs in the black community not met by white businesses, such as undertaking, barbering, and beauty shops. Walker also became a patron of black writers and artists and established scholarships for African-American women at Tuskegee Institute.

Walker, Maggie Lena: (1867-1934) The first women in the United States to serve as president of a bank, Walker was born in Richmond, Virginia, where she graduated form the city's Colored Normal School and then taught in segregated black schools. She joined the Independent Order of St. Luke as a young girl and advanced to its leadership position as the Grand Worthy Secretary. The Order of St. Luke offered sickness and death benefits to its members, and enrolled over 100,000 people in twenty-eight states. Dedicated to expanding economic opportunities for African Americans, Walker promoted educational programs, ran a weekly newspaper, a department store, and financial institutions. An outspoken activist, Walker led a boycott against segregated streetcars in Richmond in 1904.

Walker, Sarah Breedlove (aka, Madam C. J. Walker): (1867-1919) Madam C. J. Walker began her entrepreneurial success in 1905 with the development of a conditioning treatment for straightening hair. In 1910 she built a factory in Indianapolis, employing 3,000 employees, to manufacture her line of cosmetics, and before her death in 1919 she was a millionaire, one of the most successful business executives in the early twentieth century. Sarah Breedlove was born in Louisiana and orphaned when she was seven. She married at age 14 having little education and was widowed at age 20. For almost the next two decades she supported herself and her daughter as a washerwoman. She married Charles J. Walker, a newspaperman, and while the marriage did not last, she retained the Walker name. In 1905, she developed a system for de-kinking hair, and treating scalp ailments that proved both immensely popular and profitable. In this process she used hot combs, an idea that while not invented by her, was put into wide use in her system. The Walker name and product line was sold by her estate in 1985. Shortly before her death she donated $5,000 to the NAACP's anti-lynching campaign, the largest single donation received by the NAACP up to that time.

Walls, Josiah T.: (1842-1905) Born the son of slaves in 1842, Walls became Florida's first black representative to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served three terms before the end of Reconstruction.

Washington, Booker Taliaferro: (1856-1915) "In all things that are purely social we can be separated as the fingers. Yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.--Booker T. Washington, from the Atlanta Speech at the Atlanta Cottons States and International Exhibition, 1895.

Born into slavery in Virginia and freed by the Emancipation Proclamation (1863), Booker T. was a boy without a surname until he chose his own upon beginning school at the age of ten. Working in the salt mines, coal mines, and as a janitor to obtain an education, he dedicated his life to promote education as a means for African Americans to achieve economic stability. Unlike Du Bois, his contemporary, Washington did not advocate civil rights, political involvement, or higher education; he advocated betterment through vocational training, a means by which African Americans could provide needed services to society. This supporter of "dignity in labor," graduated from Hampton Institute, taught first at Malden, the school of his childhood in West Virginia, and then at Hampton Institute, both restricted to members of his race. In 1880 the Alabama State legislature passed a bill to establish a school for blacks in Tuskegee, Alabama. Washington was recruited to oversee the development of the school. He accepted the challenge and guided the Normal School for Colored Teachers, as it was first called, to an institution that became an international model for the education of African Americans. Noted scientist George Washington Carver served on the faculty under the leadership of Washington. In 1881, when the school was founded, there existed no land for the school, no buildings, and an appropriation of only $2000 for faculty salaries. He borrowed money to buy an old, rundown plantation, used student labor to erect buildings in exchange for their education, and graduated the first class in 1895. Washington's success in management resulted in his becoming the most influential African-American leader of his day, a position that passed on to W.E.B. Du Bois after his death in 1915.

In addition to the success of Tuskegee, which he ran from its inception until his death in 1915, Washington was the first man of color to speak from the same stage as white men and women in the South. His speech, called the "Atlanta Compromise" (1895), pleased many whites during the era of Jim Crow because it called for separate but equal facilities. He accepted segregation on these terms, which offended some other African-American leaders of his time, although he remained the chief spokesman for African Americans until his death. His philosophy appears in his three published works: Up From Slavery (1900), My Larger Education (1911), and Farthest Down (1912). In addition to his accomplishments in education, he founded The National Negro Business League (1900), an association that offered practical advice to black businesspersons. He also advised three presidents, William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, and William Taft, on race relations in the United States.

His legacy is far reaching. Today Tuskegee is a university housing 3000 students. No longer restricted to normal and industrial trades, it offers bachelors, masters, and doctoral programs. It is the only campus in the U.S. that is designated a national historic site. Booker T. Washington is buried on campus, and the inscription on a monument in his honor sums up a life dedicated to helping others achieve: "He lifted the veil of ignorance from his people and pointed the way to progress through education and industry."

This Encyclopedia Biography was submitted by Claudia M. Stolz, a professor at Indiana University East in Richmond, Indiana.
Booker T. Washington Lesson Activity Suggestions.

Watermelon: Citrullus vulgaris, spread from Sudan to Egypt during the second millennium B.C.E. Now, it is distributed throughout the world. The transatlantic slave trade served as a major vehicle in transporting watermelon to the New World, where it remained a favorite among blacks and whites alike. Enslaved field hands often planted watermelon in the fields so they could enjoy them in July and August, the two hottest months of the year, while they hoed and picked cotton.

Waters, Ethel: (1896-1977) Ethel Waters is known as a distinguished vocalist and actress and may well have been the first African-American superstar. She first came to New York in 1919 and joined the vaudeville circuit. By the mid-1920s she had left her style of Blues music and become well known for pop singing. In 1929 she earned her first role in a film, On With the Show. In 1930 she appeared with Duke Ellington in Check and Double Check. Because of her tall, shapely figure and her sweet signing voice, she was know as Sweet Mama String Bean early in her career. In 1939, she became the first black woman to star in a Broadway drama, Mamba's Daughters. This was followed by her work in the all-black musical Cabin in the Sky both on stage and screen. Her rendition of "Happiness Is Just a Thing Called Joe" is the most memorable part of the film. She also starred in other motion pictures including Pinky, for which she received an Academy Award nomination, and The Sound and the Fury. In what was perhaps her greatest role, she played a cook in the 1950 film The Member of the Wedding. After touring for years with the Billy Graham Crusade, she died in 1977 in Chatsworth, California.

Weld, Lillian: (1867-1940) Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, to a prominent reform-minded family, Waed became a nurse and helped establish the Henry Street Settlement in New York City in 1893. She actively campaigned for civil rights and pushed for racial integration of the Henry Street classes. She helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909 and demonstrated against the racist film Birth of a Nation, which became a spectacular box-office success. She died in Westport, Connecticut on September 1, 1940, after a lifetime of advocacy for civil rights and other progressive causes, including women's rights.

Wells, Ida B.: (1862-1931) Born a slave in Holly Springs, Mississippi, Wells raised her four orphaned brothers and then became a schoolteacher in Memphis, Tennessee, where she purchased and edited a newspaper, the Memphis Free Speech. Outraged by the lynching of three black grocers in Memphis in 1892, Wells devoted her life to a crusade against lynching, lecturing and writing profusely while organizing anti-lynching societies throughout the nation. Her pamphlet, A Red Record (1895), presented a systematic study of lynching, debunking the myth that the murdered victims were rapists and black criminals. She opposed segregated schools in Chicago and helped form the first African-American Women's suffrage organization in the nation. A public attack on her character inspired thousands of African-American women to convene in her defense in Boston in July 1895, forming the National Federation of Afro-American Women. This group soon merged with hundreds of other women's clubs to form the National Association of Colored Women (NACW).

The Civil War ended in 1865 and Ida B. Wells' parents were freed from slavery. Wells was the first of eight children born to Jim and Lizzie in 1862, in Holly Springs, Mississippi. Wells enjoyed school and excelled in writing, a talent that would prove very important in her life.

Wells attended Rust College in Holly Springs and Fisk University in Nashville. She taught in Memphis and wrote for the newspaper, The Living Word and lost her job because she spoke up about rights and fair laws. She then started her own newspaper, The Memphis Free Speech. This came about because of an incident where the Tennessee Rifles, a black state militia, was illegally disarmed and the Ku Klux Klan (a hate group formed right after the Civil War) dragged three black men from a jail and shot them at close range. Wells made this incident public and wrote about it and other lynchings, beatings and house burnings. Over 10,000 blacks had been killed since the end of the Civil War. She brought this fact to the attention of President William McKinley.

Wells married Ferdinand L. Barnett, a newspaperman from Chicago in 1895. They had four children. She started the Ida B. Wells Club whose members were women against violence. "No more lynching!" was their cry. Wells-Barnett traveled to New York to meet with people of all races to stop the violence. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) came out of this meeting. Wells-Barnett worked all her life to stop the Ku Klux Klan by starting awareness groups and publishing information about their activities.

After suffering an illness for two years, Wells died in 1931. In 1990, a postage stamp was issued in her honor. Wells chose to do something and made a difference.

This Encyclopedia Biography was submitted by Leslie S. Bezich, Seventh Grade Teacher at Richardson Middle School in Torrance, California.

Wells-Barnett on video: Ida B. Wells, A Passion for Justice: the Memoirs of Ida B. Wells (Video recording), NYC, NY, William Greaves Productions, c.1989. 53 minutes

Wells-Barnett in Books: Lisandrelli, Elaine Slivinski, Ida B. Wells-Barnett: Crusader Against Lynching, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois. c1998.; McKissack, Patricia and Frederick, Great African Americans: Ida B. Wells-Barnett, A Voice Against Violence, Enslow Publishers, Inc., Berkley Heights, New Jersey, c1991.

More Books on Civil Rights and American Civil Rights Leaders: Carnes, Jim, Us and Them: A History of Intolerance in America, Oxford University Press, Oxford, New York, c1996.; Harmon, Rod L., Collective Biographies: American Civil Rights Leaders, Enslow Publishers, Inc., Berkley Heights, New Jersey, c2000.; Meltzer, Milton, The Black Americans: A History in Their Own Words (1619-1983), Thomas Y. Crowell Junior Books, New York, NewYork, c1984; Patterson, Charles, Social Reform Movements: The Civil Rights Movement, Facts on File, Inc., New York, New York, c1995. For teacher-reviewed external web sites on Wells, click here.
Ida B. Wells Lesson Activity Suggestions.

West Virginia State College: Originally founded as the West Virginia Colored Institute in 1891, West Virginia State College began as a land grant college, funded by the Second Morrill Land Grant of 1890. Because the terms of the land grant stipulated that funds from the sale of land for the purpose of establishing schools were to be made equally to white and black citizens, the West Virginia state legislature approved the creation of the Institute in order to ensure continuation of federal funds to the state's earlier white land grant school, West Virginia University. Unable at first to find a site for the school, the two black settlements of Cabell Farm and Piney Grove, combined to form the town of Institute and welcomed the new school. A year after its inception, the school added a normal school curriculum and in 1915 changed its name to West Virginia Collegiate Institute and granted its first degrees in 1919. By 1920, the school had a student population of 345, with 29 black teachers. Avoiding the industrial model, the Institute offered three sections of courses: the English course, that was largely elementary for trade-oriented students; the normal course, a combination of primary and secondary level work with some attention to teacher training; and academic courses, which included college preparatory subjects. It became West Virginia State College in 1929. After the state mandated that schools be desegregated in 1955, white students began enrolling. Today it is racially integrated, with white students in the vast majority of its 5,000 students (88% white, 11.5% black).

West, Dorothy: (1907/8-1998) Raised in the Boston, the daughter of a slave, Dorothy West moved to New York City when she was a teenager. In the 1920s she became associated with the writers of the Harlem Renaissance and began to write. Her Renaissance career was marked by her association with most of the literary giants of the day, many of whom referred to her as "little sister." She also acted in small roles on state and traveled in 1932 to Russia with Langston Hughes and other black intellectuals to take part in a film produced by the Communists to illustrate racial prejudice as it existed in the United States. This effort, however, was derailed. When she returned to America it was to a nation beset by the Great Depression. She helped found the journal Challenge and then, along with Richard Wright, co-founded The New Challenge. Because of financial difficulties and conflicts with Wright, the journal folded after only a single issue. In the 1930s she worked as a relief social investigator and in the 1940s as a writer of short stories for the New York Daily News. In 1943 she moved to Martha's Vineyard to work on her autobiographical novel, The Living Is Easy, which was published in 1948. This work launched a satirical attack on the "class and color politics of the black bourgeoisie" and the complex relationships between women in the African-American community. Remaining in Martha's Vineyard, she later became acquainted with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis who helped to sponsor her work. Her second novel appeared in 1995, The Wedding.

Whipper, Frances Rollin: (1844-1901) Married to black lawyer and ardent reformer William James Whipper, Frances was the daughter of a well-known free black family in Charleston, South Carolina, sister to Charlotte and Katherine, and well known within Republican Party politics. Following the Civil War Frances brought suit against a small steamboat operator for refusing her passage, which she eventually won. Frances died in 1901 in Port Royal, South Carolina, having worked most of her life after her husband's death in 1876 in government offices in Washington D.C.

White Primary: This device limited participation in political party primaries to whites. It was used to disfranchise blacks in those southern states where Democrats controlled the majority of the vote; the White Primary was justified on the grounds that political parties and primary elections were private institutions not governed by federal oversight. By 1920, these rules were the norm in all southern state elections and in nearly every southern county. The Supreme Court finally ruled in 1944 in Smith v. Allwright that white primaries violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

White, Walter: (1893-1955) Walter White, an African American with blond hair and blue eyes, was born on July 1, 1893 in Atlanta, Georgia. He experienced the brutality of racism when, at age 13, he confronted a mob of whites who threatened to invade his home. White graduated from Atlanta University in 1916 and two years later, became an executive secretary to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. In 1931 he became chief executive of the organization, a position he held until his death in 1955.

During his tenure he investigated lynchings and race riots in the years between the world wars. During World War II he spearheaded NAACP efforts to desegregate the armed forces and to promote fair employment in defense industries. As a result of those efforts, President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 which created the Fair Employment Practice Committee and which barred racial discrimination in defense industry employment. That measure, adopted on June 25, 1941, represented the first time a president acted to end racial discrimination.

In 1945 White, along with other prominent black leaders, represented the NAACP at the founding of the United Nations in San Francisco. In the years that followed he fought against negative racial stereotyping in the motion picture industry, he opposed the poll tax and other devices used to keep blacks from the voting booth, he promoted residential integration and an end to segregation in public education. In addition to his role as director of the NAACP, White was active in other fields as well. He served as a war correspondent, he was a journalist for two newspapers, and he wrote two novels and an autobiography.

However, his tenure as head of the NAACP was not without controversy. Critics accused him of amassing too much power, of becoming too concerned with his own celebrity, and of using his position for personal gain. He was particularly attacked for divorcing his wife, an African American, and subsequently marrying a white woman. He weathered these criticisms and, under his direction, the NAACP became the dominant force in the struggle to end racial inequality in the United States. He died of a heart attack in 1955, soon after the NAACP's greatest victory in the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas case that ended racial discrimination in education and launched the civil rights movement in the decade that followed.

This Encyclopedia Biography was submitted by Don Schwartz, a history professor at California State University at Long Beach.

Whitecapping: (1880-1895) White night riders who drove successful African-American farmers off their lands in the hilly regions of the South in a process of violent intimidation that came to be known as whitecapping. At least 239 cases of such terrorist attacks were documented in the 1880s and 1890s, with most of them happening in Mississippi. The term seems to have originated in Indiana, where nightriders disguised themselves by wearing white caps.

Whittaker, Johnson C.: (1858-1932) Born a slave in South Carolina, Whittaker, the only black cadet at West Point in 1880, was court martialed and convicted of lying under oath about his allegations of being attacked by fellow white cadets. The Academy dishonorably discharged him for conduct unbecoming an officer. In July 1995, President Bill Clinton awarded Whittaker his commission posthumously in the U. S. Army.

Wilberforce University: Despondent over the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1851, a group of ministers from the Methodist Episcopal Church gathered in Cincinnati, Ohio, to discuss the future of education for African Americans. An 1844 attempt by the African Methodist Episcopal Church to found a seminary had been unsuccessful and the group resolved "to recommend the establishment of a Literary Institution of a high order, for the education of Colored People, and the Preparation of Teachers" as well as a seminary. In 1856, Wilberforce University, named for the noted eighteenth-century British abolitionist Lord William Wilberforce, opened near Xenia Springs, Ohio. It was one of three black educational institutions--Cheyney and Lincoln (originally Ashmum Institute)-- to open in the United States before the Civil War (only Cheyney University predated it), and the first to be owned and operated by African Americans.

During the Civil War, the school's southern patronage evaporated, and the school closed in 1862. One of the original trustees, Bishop Daniel Payne, raised $10,000 to buy the school. It reopened in 1863, owned by the African Methodist Episcopal Church, providing elementary education to local residents. More difficulties lay ahead when the school was destroyed by arson on the day Abraham Lincoln died, April 14, 1865. The school persevered, however, and its first bachelors' degrees were awarded in 1867. A normal and an industrial department were added in 1887 (which eventually separated from the school in 1947 to become Central State University). In 1894, Payne Theological Seminary was established at Wilberforce and the school also became the first black college designated for military training. Black educator and intellectual W.E.B. Du Bois rated the college among the "Second-Grade Colored Colleges" in his national evaluation survey conducted in 1910. Five years later, its enrollment stood at 193 students, most of whom boarded at the school, and 60 percent were males. Its all black faculty that year was composed of 16 males and three females. Most of its students studied at the secondary level (85), with the rest at the college level (65) or in theological studies.

In 1982, the old historic campus was sold and became the National Museum of Afro-American History and Culture Center. The new Wilberforce campus enrolls approximately 700 students and offers undergraduate study in thirty-six different fields.

Wiley College: Bishop Issac Wiley of the United Methodist Church and the Freedman's Aid Society founded Wiley College in 1873, located in Marshall, Texas. It was the first historically black college west of the Mississippi. F. C. Moore served as the college's first president. The college had a white missionary faculty and was administered by whites for its first 20 years. After undergoing a reorganization in 1892, Wiley appointed its first black president, Bishop Isaiah B. Scott, and black teachers gradually replaced the white faculty members. The school offered regular college courses and some vocational training as well as grades below the college level until 1922. Thereafter, the college functioned solely as an institution of higher education. In 1907, Wiley received funding from the Carnegie Foundation to build the first Carnegie college library west of the Mississippi. In 1962,Wiley and Bishop College students held sit-ins at the local Woolworth store in opposition to segregation. Their activities and the local reaction made national headlines, and these demonstrations helped integrate public facilities in Marshall. In the 1970s and 1980s Wiley College offered B.S. and B.A. degrees in education, humanities, natural sciences and mathematics, social sciences, and business. Pre-professional training in medicine, nursing, dentistry, and law was also available, and the college had a program in engineering administered in cooperation with New York University. College enrollment stood at 417 in 1992, and increased by the fall of 1998 to 659. The class of 2000 consisted of 498 African Americans and ten "Other/unclassified" students. The campus is located approximately forty miles west of Shreveport, Louisiana, and 150 miles east of Dallas, Texas, in the city of Marshall. It serves the African-American youth of Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. It consistently attracts students from throughout the United States and from many foreign countries.

Williams, Hosea: (1926-2000) Born into poverty in rural southwest Georgia, Williams studied at Morris Brown College and Atlanta University and became a research chemist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He left Washington to become a chief lieutenant in Martin Luther King, Jr.'s non-violent Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and was jailed 135 times during civil rights protests.

Wilson, August: (1945 - ) Born on April 27, 1945 as Frederick Kittel in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the setting of many of his plays, August Wilson, the son of a German father and an African-American mother, is one of America's leading playwrights. Wilson, a high school dropout, holds the distinction of twice receiving the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, in 1987 for Fences and in 1990 for The Piano Lesson. His plays explore African-American life in specific decades of the 20th century. Greatly influenced by the blues, Wilson probes in his plays the theme of separation, migration, and reunion, and he describes how the search for cultural identity and self-affirmation in an unwelcoming society has affected the African-American psyche.

This Encyclopedia Biography was submitted by Claudia Matherly Stolz, Ph.D. Urbana University, Ohio

Winston-Salem State University: Winston-Salem State University, located in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, was founded as the Slater Industrial Academy on September 28, 1892. Named after a wealthy, New England textile manufacturer and philanthropist, John F. Slater, it began in a one-room frame structure with 25 pupils and one teacher. In 1895, the school was recognized by the state of North Carolina, and thereafter chartered (in 1897) as the Slater Industrial and State Normal School. In 1925, the General Assembly of North Carolina recognized the school's leadership in the training of elementary school teachers, granted the school a new charter, and changed its name to Winston-Salem Teachers College. Thus, it became the first Negro institution in the nation to grant degrees for teaching in the elementary grades. The Nursing School was established in 1953, awarding graduates the degree of Bachelor of Science. In 1957, the North Carolina General Assembly revised the charter of the college and authorized the expansion of the curriculum to include secondary education and any other specific types of training as directed and determined by the State Board of Higher Education. The North Carolina General Assembly of 1963 authorized the changing of Winston-Teachers College to Winston-Salem State College. A statute designating Winston-Salem Teachers College as Winston-Salem State University received legislative approval in 1969. On July 1, 1972, Winston-Salem State University (WSSU) became one of sixteen constituent institutions of The University of North Carolina.

In the fall of 2000, WSSU had a student population of 2,857. The university includes the College of Arts and Science and three professional schools: Education, Business, and Economics and Health Sciences. Students may select one of thirty-six major fields leading to a Bachelor of Arts Degree, a Bachelor of Science Degree, a Bachelor of Science in Applied Science, a Bachelor of Science in Clinical Laboratory Sciences, Bachelor of Science in Nursing, Bachelor of Science in Occupational Therapy, a Master's Degree in Physical Therapy, and a Master's Degree in Elementary Education.

Woodson, Carter G.: (1875-1950) Born December 19, 1875 in New Canton, Virginia, the son of former slaves, Woodson was the oldest of nine children and spent six years in the coalfields of West Virginia to help support his family. He did not go to school until he was 20, and then only part time in Virginia. He earned B. A. and M. A. degrees from the University of Chicago (1908), and a Ph.D. in history from Harvard (1912). Among his many important positions, Woodson served as supervisor of schools in the Philippines (1903-06) during U. S. military occupation, as Dean of Liberal Arts at Howard University (1919), and at West Virginia State College (1920). He founded the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History in 1915, and began publication of the Journal of Negro History one year later. His most famous work is The Negro in Our History (1922), which went through 10 editions and was a widely used college text. It focuses on race history, emphasizing examples of individual African-American successes. Closely aligned with the ideas of Booker T. Washington, Woodson helped shape the debate in the 1930s and 40s among black scholars and activists about the purpose and utility of formal education. Woodson argued always that educated blacks were obligated to uplift the black masses. He strongly believed in the need to present successful role models to black school children, which led him to organize the first Negro History Week on February 1926, which later became Black History Month--and he is remembered today as the "Father of Black History." His important scholarship includes Education of the Negro prior to 1861 (1915), A Century of Negro Migration (1918), The Negro in Our History (1922), and The Mind of the Negro as Reflected in Letters Written during the Crisis (1926).

Wright, Richard N.: (1908-1960) Born just outside Natchez, Mississippi, Wright published his autobiographical Native Son in 1940, the first of many Depression-era novels that reviewers praised as "the new American tragedy." It told of why young black men would turn to enraged violence in response to the devastating effect of poverty and persistent Jim Crow segregation and prejudice in the ghettos of urban America. Its protagonist lashes out at family and society with murderous results, demonstrating that many African Americans seethed with hatred for the whites all around them. It is standard reading in American literature as one of the great American protest novels. Leaving Mississippi in 1934, Wright moved to Chicago to work in the Works Progress Administration. He soon joined the Communist Party, but left it in 1944 and thereafter denounced it persistently. He wrote his autobiography, Black Boy, in 1945, just prior to moving to Paris, where he lived until his death. While in Paris, he wrote numerous short stories and a novel, The Outsider (1953).

Wright, Richard R.: (1878-1967) Born in Cuthburt, Georgia, Wright worked as a dishwasher, janitor, and farmhand while supporting his education. He served as editor of the Christian Recorder, business manager of the A.M.E. Book Concern, where he later became a senior Bishop in the A.M.E. church. As president of Wilberforce University in Ohio, he was one of the major voices for African-American rights. He is well known for his literary works in A.M.E. Church history and American sociology.