Wright's Rising Prominence Correlating to Rising Eminence, Rising Fortune and Changing Lifestyles

As Richard Wright had gone through the worst part ofwho was now engaged in filming a documentary with
his life in the South, he moved Northwards to ChicagoJohn Steinbeck titled The Forgotten Village was
and eventually landing in New York he started rising toanother opportunity for Wright to exploit to the full.
prominence, with his lifestyle itself going throughDeveloping an interest in the filming Wright followed
significant changes as well as his literary projectsthem right through the countryside. He then signs a
growing beyond novels and autobiographies ontocontract with Orson Welles and John Houseman for
drama and films..the stage production of Native Son.
His brother was now engaged in the Works ProgressStrains in the marriage started to become evident and
Administration in which Richard himself got engaged.then Wright realizing it was breaking up, leaves Mexico
His brother's employment.and his assuming someand travels through the South alone.On the trip back to
responsibility for the family's support. relieved RichardNew York, he stopped to visit his father for the first
from wholly and singly supporting the family as he hadtime in twenty-five years. His father during this visit
been doing before.was described in Black Boy as "standing alone upon
Richard Wright ranking first in the postal service examthe red clay of a Mississippi plantation, a sharecropper,
in Chicago did not lure him into staying back. He turnsclad in ragged overalls, holding a muddy hoe in his
down the resulting offer of a permanent position atgnarled, veined hands...when I tried to talk to him I
about $2,000 a year in order to move to New Yorkrealized that...we were forever strangers, speaking a
City to pursue his career as a writer. But on the waydifferent language, living on vastly distant planes of
there, he stays briefly with his artist acquaintances inreality."
Greenwich Village. He then moves to Harlem, byHe returned to New York and divorced Dhimah in
mid-June 1937 and secures a furnished room in the1940.
Douglass Hotel at 809 St. Nicholas Avenue.In 1941he married Ellen Poplar,a daughter of Polish
Later in the year he attends the Second AmericanJewish immigrants, a white woman and Communist
Writer's Congress as a delegate and got elevated toparty member with whom he had worked and been in
a session president. He also becomes the Harlemlove before he married Dhimah. A year later their first
editor for Daily Worker and writes over 200 artclesdaughter Julia was born in 1942. Rachel was born in
for it during the year. Amongst the pieces he wroteParis in 1949. In 1942 Wright moves again to 7 Middagh
were a series of articles on blues singer Leadbelly. HeStreet, a 19th century house near the Brooklyn
also collaborates with other writers like Dorothy WestBridgesharing house sharing the house with several
and Marian Minnas to launch the magazine Newother writers and artists like Carson McCullers.
Challenge which was designed to present black life asDuring 1940-1941 Wright collaborated with Paul Green
related to the struggle against war and Fascism.to write a stage adaptation of Native Son which ran
Towards the close of the year Wight was alreadyon Broadway in the spring of 1941 and was produced
writing the Harlem section for New York Panoramaby John Houseman and staged by Orson Welles.
and was also working on "The Harlems" in The NewSimultaneously, Wright published his
York City Guide"sociological-psychological treatise Twelve Million Black
The next year he rents another furnished room at 139Voices: A Folk History of the Negro in the United
West 143rd Street. and announces plans to marry theStates (1941), with photographs collected by Edwin
daughter of his Harlem landlady, but which he laterRosskam; the book was well received. He was
cancels revealing to friends that a medical examinationelected vice-president of the League of American
had indicated that the young lady had congenitalWriters.
syphilis.Native Son starring Canada Lee opens also at St
Not too long after, he moves house again, this timeJames Theatre on March 24 after a benefit
moving into the home of friends from Chicago, Janeperformance for the NAACP with favorable reviews
and Herbert Newton, at 175 Carleton Avenue inexcept for the Hearst pages which have been hostile
Brooklyn. Newton's landlord evicts them. Then Wrightto Orson Welles following his acting in Citizen Kane.
moves again, this time with the Newtons to 5222The production runs in New York until June 15. Welle's
Gates Avenue.striking but costly staging caused the production to lose
In 1939 Wright moves to Douglas Hotel at 809 Stsome money which were however recovered during
Nicholas Avenue, renting the room that was next to aa successful tour of Pittsburg, Boston, Chicago,
friend from Chicago, Theodore Ward. Around this time,Milwaukee, Detroit, St Louis and Baltimore.
he becomes close to Ellen Poplar and was consideringWright's reputation and stature was now so large and
marrying her when another woman stole his heart.impressive that he could singly champion noble and
Later in that year, he married the woman that stole hisselfless social causes such as his asking the New
heart away from Ellen Poplar, Dhima Rose Meadman,Jersey Governor to parole Clinton Brewer, a black
a modern-dance teacher and ballet dancer of Russianman who had been imprisoned since 1923 for
Jewish ancestry in an Episcopal church on Conventmurdering a young woman, arguing that Brewer who
Avenue, with fellow African-American novelist, Ralphhad taught himself musical composition had sufficiently
Ellison, serving as his best man. He lives with his wife,rehabilitated himself to be gainfully reabsorbed into
her two-year -old son by an earlier marriage and hissociety. Brewster is then released on July 8. But even
mother-in law in a large apartment on the fashionablethough Brewer did not avoid getting into further trouble
Hamilton Terrace in Harlem. But the two did not lastWright never tired of trying to rescue him.
together for long as they separated shortly thereafter.His autobiography, Black Boy, came out in 1945, and it
Also in 1940 Richard Wright takes his first airplanetoo emerged as both a bestseller and
flight. He was accompanying Life magazineBook-of-the-Month Club selection, although the U.S.
photographers to Chicago for an article which wasSenate denounced it as "obscene."
being written on the South Side which Richard had aThe later section about his life in Chicago and
thorough knowledge of. He toured the area with theexperience with the Communist party was not
sociologist, Horace Cayton, starting a relationship thatpublished until 1977 under the title American Hunger.
was to last for long. In February 1940 whilst on a visitWright's publishers in 1945 had only wanted the story
to Chicago he bought a house for his family onof his life in the South. So they cut what followed
Vincennes Avenue and has lunch with prominentabout his life in the North.
African American writers, W.E.B. Dubois, LangstonHe worked during 1949-1951 on a film version of Native
Hughes and Arna Bontemps.Son, in which he himself played Bigger. Wright, forty
Wright in April sailed with his wife, her son, her mother,years old and overweight, had to train and stretch
and his wife's pianist for Veracruz, Mexico for a fewverisimilitude to play the nineteen-year-old Bigger.
months. He rents a ten-roomed villa in the MiravalDuring filming in Buenos Aires and Chicago, the
colony in Caenevaca. There he starts learning Spanish,production was fraught with problems. The film was
taking lessons in it. He seizes the opportunity ofreleased briefly but was unsuccessful. European
learning to play the guitar.Getting reunited with Herbertaudiences acclaimed it, but the abridged version failed
Kline, a longtime friend of the John Reed club daysin the United States and the film disappeared.