Historical Context

Beyond those sad, personal struggles of the author lies a more profound, far-reaching racial problem affecting an entire race in America: a case of segregation legitimized by the laws and traditions of the late 19th century and inherited by the early 20th century. These laws, on paper, professed equal racial relations, but went on to build separate facilities and ultimately divided the black and white races of America. This article will cover the key backgrounds of Richard Wright’s ‘Native Son.’ 

Personal Context

Much of the building up of Richard Wright’s ‘Native son’ character Bigger Thomas was done purely from the experiences of the author through his earlier years living and traveling through the many black communities. Events from these special yet emotional moments would become the building block on which Richard Wright erected his best-seller ‘Native Son.’ Here, all the important personal timelines preceding the book will be looked into.

Wright’s Early Years in Mississippi

Richard Wright was born in Mississippi and spent a huge part of his childhood around Natchez, the place of his birth, and the city of Jackson – which was the place where his maternal grandmother lived, and he would later in his teen years come back to live. Wright stayed in Natchez through the mid 1910s to early 20s, living with his parents and younger brother, but when his father Nathan abandoned the family, his mother was forced to move them to Tennessee for a short while as she searched for greener pastures. 

Wright’s time in Mississippi was a significant backdrop for ‘Native Son’ because, for a city where he was born on a plantation straight into poverty and having to grow up through his teens knowing that life’s hard for his color, it allowed him to have lived that personal experience with a poor family living in the city slum similar to his ‘Native Son’ book character, Bigger Thomas. 

His Time in Tennessee

Memphis, Tennessee, was where Wright began seeing the full extent of black oppression and racial segregation. Because he had begun to come of age and sought to network in a city which was much more diverse and populated than his Mississippi hometown, Wright put himself out there, but for the first in his life, he was racially abused. 

Wright was devastated and emotionally drained by the incident; however, he soon found out his experience wasn’t personal but was part of a wide range of perceptions and treatment of colored people. Wright left Tennessee disappointed but most importantly, learned a harsh lesson about what life had in store for his kind: he would later document his experiences in his later essays. 

Chicago

Through the middle to late 1920s and early 30s, Wright had experienced living in several black communities and by the time he came to Chicago, he already knew what to expect, so it wasn’t hard for him to adjust. Like in previous cities he’d been to, Chicago was also predominantly controlled by white supremacy and the blacks suffered segregation and isolation as they were forced to live at some distant location away from white communities. 

South Side Chicago, though made of slums, was the safe haven where black people had organized a community and felt safe and equal amongst themselves. Wright saw how many oppressed black youths were driven to a life of crime due to frustration and unjust treatment they’d received from society, one run by white authorities which derived joy in persecuting these ignorant black offenders – and some even getting killed like in the case of Robert Nixon. The author would then record these experiences in an introductory essay to ‘Native Son’ which he titled ‘How Bigger Was Born.’ 

Social Context

On the social context front, there were social laws and entrenchments that preceded the publication of ‘Native Son.’ Some of these laws were brought into existence in the latter part of the 19th century – way before Wright was born.

Jim Crow Laws

One such popular law that had a divisive characteristic was the Jim Crow laws, which came late 19th and institutionalized segregation and oppression for several decades until it was doused by the heat of the American Civil Rights movement of 1965.

The Jim Crow laws provided the nationwide impetus for segregation, and soon there were several other state-sanctioned and local regulations that limited the freedom and involvement of African Americans in public or social opportunities and affairs, and by the 1930s and 40s, there had already been so many divisions between these two races that they almost didn’t have anything in common anymore. 

Other Laws

The laws – particularly established after the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision – enforced a different set of facilities for blacks and whites. Black people had separate schools, separate housing, and used different drinking water and transportation facilities, among other things – and the qualities of these facilities are far from standard. 

Publishing Native Son and the Impact

Factoring these histories, Wright published ‘Native Son’ in 1940 – capturing the core details of the struggles of black people in his time. Post-publication of ‘Native Son’ was a time the segregation was still waxing strongly, but the book – after having a quick large sales and an immediate orientating impact on the people – would eventually become a formidable tool for the fight to end segregation and instill racial unity in America – and the world saw that fight peaking in the 1960s with the civil rights movement pioneered by fearless leader Martin Luther King Jr. 

Native Son Banning

The banning of ‘Native Son’ also represents an important event in the lifespan of the book. Fascinatingly, there’s no record of the book getting banned at the time it was published even though the book offended a lot of powerful stakeholders, including a white authority. Its eventual ban came later in 1998 after parents of Californian high school students petitioned that the book be withdrawn from school curriculums and libraries for its racial and sexually explicit themes.

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