Black Boy

Note: Read only Part One of Black Boy

1. Discuss the debate between DuBois and Washington about the best way for Black men and women to achieve success in American society. What happens to the Horatio Alger story when the participants are African-American?
2. Read Wright's analysis of the black dilemma on Pages 312-314 and compare it to DuBois's discussion of the dual identity of American Negros. Give examples of Wright's own confrontation with this crisis of consciousness. How would either man respond to one critic who complained: "Everyone has gone through some of the experiences [Wright] did without the bitter addition of the race angle. The working at dirty jobs that in Richard's case caused bitterness because there was a white overseer."
3. Wright said in a 1945 interview that "There's a danger in riding the moral high-horse. The well-meaning old ladies who say nice things about 'my nice colored maid' are sidestepping the Negro problem." What did Wright think were the real issues or events in his life that defined the Negro problem? Do you agree?
4. Wright wrote in The Lexington Reader that "Living in the South doomed me to look always through eyes which the South had given me, and bewilderment and fear made me mute and afraid. But after I left the South, luck gave me other eyes, new eyes with which to look at the meaning of what I'd lived through." What do you think this means?
5. What was the "hunger" that Wright wrote about? Do you think his solutions--for example literacy or knowledge of society--could be applied to all of Black America? How would Booker T. Washington respond?

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Internet Resources

Publisher's Guide

The Richmond Planet: Born in the Wake of Freedom

Articles and cartoons from the oldest Negro newspaper in the United States. Issues addressed include Jim Crow, lynching, and the editorial leadership of former slave John Mitchell, Jr.

Biography of Richard Wright at Wikipedia

An unauthorized biography that should not be cited in academic research.

From Jim Crow To Linda Brown

Resources and exercises that describe and contextualize the African-American experience between 1897 and 1953.