Untitled speech, on African-American literature [manuscript] / by Richard Wright, undated.

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Untitled speech, on African-American literature [manuscript] / by Richard Wright, undated.

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/277040622

Wright's speech on African-American literature states "I do most seriously want to tell you about Negro writing, [what] that writing means, how it came to be written, what relationship it had to its time, and what it means to us today...." He gives examples from the work of Phillis Wheatley, W.E.B. DuBois, James Weldon Johnson, Jean Toomer, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, Margaret Walker and others. The speech contains the signature of Wright's friend and biographer Constance Webb with her note that the speech was probably delivered between the publication of "Native Son" and "Black Boy."

University of Virginia. Library

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SNAC Resource ID: 7246835

University of Virginia. Library

Related Entities

There are 9 Entities related to this resource.

Johnson, James Weldon, 1871-1938

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w62g8fd2 (person)

James Weldon Johnson was a publisher, educator, lawyer, composer, artist, diplomat, and civil rights leader. Together with his brother, J. Rosamond Johnson, he wrote the song "Lift Every Voice and Sing", which came to be known as the "Negro National Anthem", as well as a large number of popular songs for the musical stage of the early twentieth century. Johnson also served as consul of the United States to Venezuela and Nicaragua. He wrote several books and served as editor of the New York Age. ...

McKay, Claude, 1890-1948

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Author, poet. Born in Jamaica. From the description of Claude McKay letters and manuscripts 1915-1952. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 122682552 From the guide to the Claude McKay letters and manuscripts, 1915-1952, (The New York Public Library. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division.) Claude McKay (1890-1948), novelist and poet. From the description of Claude McKay collection, 1853-1990 (bulk 1922-19...

Wright, Richard, 1908-1960

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Richard Nathaniel Wright was born September 4, 1908 near Natchez, Mississippi, to Ella Wilson Wright, a schoolteacher, and Nathan Wright, a sharecropper. The story of Richard Wright's childhood, with its harrowing episodes of abandonment by his father, his temporary consignment to an orphanage after his mother became ill, and his short-lived schooling under the harsh guardianship of his grandmother have been detailed in his autobiography, Black Boy (published in 1945 by Harper & Row)....

Walker, Margaret, 1915-1998

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6zc8xh7 (person)

Teacher, writer. From the description of Reminiscences of Margaret Abigail Walker Alexander : oral history, 1977. (Columbia University In the City of New York). WorldCat record id: 122526993 ...

Toomer, Jean, 1894-1967

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Jean Toomer (born Nathan Pinchback Toomer; December 26, 1894 – March 30, 1967) was an American poet and novelist commonly associated with the Harlem Renaissance, though he actively resisted the association, and modernism. His reputation stems from his novel Cane (1923), which Toomer wrote during and after a stint as a school principal at a black school in rural Sparta, Georgia. The novel intertwines the stories of six women and includes an apparently autobiographical thread; sociologist Charles ...

Wheatley, Phillis, c. 1753-1784

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Phillis Wheatley (c. 1753-1784), first Black woman poet in America, was brought as an African slave in about 1761 to Boston, Mass., where she was purchased by John Wheatley. Educated in the Wheatley household, first by Wheatley's wife Susannah and later by his daughter Mary, Phillis Wheatley began writing poems in her early teens. It was through her published poetry that she became a member of Boston's literati and travelled briefly to England, returning in 1773 during Mrs. Wheatley's final illn...

Webb, Constance ca. 20. Jh.

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6rj5cb3 (person)

Writer, actress, and model Constance Webb (1918-2005) was the second wife of C. L. R. James (1901-1989). Webb, the fifth of six children, was born and raised in Fresno, California. Her parents, Minerva Susan Reynolds Webb, and, George Detwyler Webb, were originally from Atlanta, Georgia. Webb joined the Socialist Party as a teenager; married and divorced two men, Norman Henderson, Jr. and Edward Keller, by the time she was twenty-five; and made her living initially as a ...

Du Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt), 1868-1963

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6gk06z2 (person)

W. E. B. Du Bois was an American sociologist, socialist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, author, writer and editor. Educated at Fisk University, he did graduate work at the University of Berlin and Harvard, where he was the first African American to earn a doctorate. Du Bois became a professor of history, sociology and economics at Atlanta University. Due to his contributions in the African-American community he was seen as a member of a Black elite that supported some aspects ...

Cullen, Countee, 1903-1946

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6s1833x (person)

African-American poet, anthologist, translator, playwright and an important figure in the Harlem Renaissance. Cullen was graduated from De Witt Clinton High School in New York City and from New York University in 1925. While attending NYU he held a part-time job as a doorman at the Grolier Club, a New York City bibliophile society. He took post-graduate work at Harvard University and received an M.A. From the description of TLS : Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Frederick B. Coykendall, ...