Richard Wright was born September 4, 1908 in Adams County, Mississippi. "I was born too far back in the woods to hear the train whistle, and you could only hear the hoot owls holler."¹

In an effort to improve their economic situation, Wright's parents boarded a boat and moved the family to Memphis. "For days I had dreamed about a huge white boat floating on a vast body of water, but when my mother took me down to the levee on the day of leaving, I saw a tiny, dirty boat that was not at all like the boat I had imagined. I was disappointed and when time came to go on board I cried and my mother thought that I did not want to go with her to Memphis, and I could not tell her what the trouble was. Solace came when I wandered about the boat and gazed...