Black Boy

Wright identifies his mother as the single most important symbol of suffering he encounters in his life. Mrs. Wright is forced to swallow her dignity to plead with Nathan Wright to help provide for Richard and his brother, an act of surrender that even the young Richard Wright understands as a violation. After suffering through a long and unsuccessful struggle to support her children by working menial jobs, Mrs. Wright has several strokes that cause her great pain and force her to undergo a series of surgeries that are only marginally successful. The process of getting the surgeries expose her to more suffering because the hospital where she has one surgery refuses to allow Black patients to stay overnight.

She enters the narrative as the woman who beats her son until he blacks out after he sets fire to her mother’s house, and she also refuses to talk with Wright about how to navigate race and racism in the South. Her absence in this regard leaves young Richard Wright on his own as he processes the terror of an uncle dying by racial violence. On the other hand, she cheers on some of his rebellions against his extended family’s efforts to force him to convert to Seventh Day Adventism. Mrs. Wright’s economic and physical struggles encapsulate for Wright the many ways that inequality hampers the full expression of Black identity in America.

Also called “Granny,” Margaret Wilson is Wright’s maternal grandmother. She is a devout Seventh Day Adventist who uses pressure and exclusion in order to coerce Wright into converting to Christianity. Conflicts with her blight much of his early life since the family lives with her for most of Wright’s childhood. Wilson is nearly white in appearance, and the way her skin color contrasts with his gives Wright his first inkling of the significance of color and segregation in the South.

Ross is a Black Communist Wright encounters during the beginning of his troubles with the Communist Party. Green under indictment for rioting while he worked to organize a strike, so Wright decides to write a profile of him in order to bring Communism to hesitant Black workers. Ross is suspicious of Wright because of the friction between Wright and the party. In the end, Ross adheres to the party line by publicly confessing that he has been an enemy of the party. His willingness to make this confession during a show trial serves as a warning to Wright about how the desire to belong can force one to give up freedom of thought. His trial is the final cause of Wright’s departure from the party.

Nathan Wright is Richard Wright’s father. He is present in the early part of the narrative as a distant, authoritarian figure who readily beats Wright for misbehavior. Early in Wright’s life, Nathan abandons the family, exposing Wright to great poverty. Nathan appears in the narrative 25 years after abandoning the family, an episode during which Wright labels his father as a peasant who lacked the resources and history to understand his son. Wright’s changing understanding of his father reflects his engagement with Communism.

The salutatorian of Wright’s graduating high school, Griggs is a foil for Richard Wright. His willingness to be servile when interacting with white people allows him to maintain the jobs Wright frequently loses because of his high-strung nature and inability to be completely subservient.

Falk is an Irish Catholic co-worker at the Memphis optical factory where Wright works for a time. He is one of several sympathetic white figures who extend themselves to help Wright and who also are conscious of being trapped in the oppressive atmosphere of the South. Falk lends Wright a library card, an act that allows Wright to check much desired American literature from the segregated library system in Memphis.

Alan is Wright’s younger brother. He is present at the start of the narrative but is separated from Wright after Wright’s mother has a stroke. Alan is not much of a presence in the book, but he does serve as one of the motivations for Wright to find work in Memphis and later in Chicago when Wright moves his family to the North with him.

Uncle Hoskins is the husband of Wright’s Aunt Maggie. He is an important but slight figure in the book because his death at the hands of a white mob forces Wright to confront the threat racial violence poses to Black people in the South.

Grandpa Wilson is Wright’s grandfather. He occasionally attempts to fulfill the role of paternal figure in Wright’s life after Wright moves in with the family, but Grandpa is mostly ineffectual. A former Civil War veteran, Grandpa dies without ever having received the pension to which he was entitled. His futile effort to secure his pension is an early lesson for Wright about the precarious position of Black people in the South.

Ella is a boarder in Margaret Wilson’s house for a brief period during Wright’s childhood. She is a slight but important figure who introduces Wright to a tale about Bluebeard and his wives, setting Wright on the road to becoming a writer.

Mrs. Moss is the kindly landlady who takes Wright on as a boarder after his arrival in Memphis as a teen, and Bess is her daughter. Wright labels them as peasant types whose limited experience of life leads them to accept Wright and other Black people at face value.

The Hoffmans are Jewish shop owners who give Wright one of his first jobs when he arrives in Chicago. Although they do not hold racist beliefs about Black people, Wright lies to them rather than tell them he took time off to take a postal service exam. They represent the greater degree of social contacts between Black and non-Black people in the North, a situation to which Wright never quite adjusts.