Bom in 1908, Richard Wright grew to adulthood in the American South at a time when legalized racial segregation and discrimination were firmly entrenched there. He experienced firsthand the severe economic, social, and psychological limitations placed on blacks in the United States during the era. Wright continued to encounter racial prejudice even after he moved north to Chicago in 1927. In Black Boy, he describes his struggle against these obstacles on the path to his becoming a well-known author.
Southern race relations. More than thirty years after the Civil War had ended and given slaves their freedom, many Southern whites continued to deem blacks an inferior and, to them, a threatening race. This perception is reflected in works by Southern scholars of the early twentieth century, including The Negro a Beast, or, In the Image of God and The Negro, A Menace to American Civilization. It was an attitude that governed interracial relations in the South while Richard Wright was growing up.
During this period, many members of white society exercised their prejudices toward blacks under a complex system of racial etiquette.
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