Nathan Wright, like most black sharecroppers, was extremely poor. In 1911 Ella Wright went to Natchez to live with her family while Nathan became an itinerant worker. Later that same year, in an effort to improve their economic status, Nathan Wright loaded his family onto a riverboat at Natchez and migrated to Memphis, Tennessee. Nathan Wright then deserted his family.
Richard Wright lived in Memphis until he was almost eight. As small children he and his younger brother Leon were often hungry and were expected to look out for themselves. The menial jobs that Ella Wright now had to take did not provide adequate income to support the family. Wright's autobiography, Black Boy (1945), explains: "I would feel hunger nudging my ribs, twisting my empty guts until they ached. I would grow dizzy and my vision would dim-" His mother would send him to beg money from his father, now living with a mistress. In 1914 Ella Wright became ill, and the two brothers were sent to Settlement House, a Methodist orphanage.
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