Wright, Racism, and Violence
Richard Wright’s short story “Down By the Riverside” is a fiery critique of racial segregation in the Jim Crow south. Through the usage of black naturalism, Wright paints a rather negative picture of black identity in the south, yet he offers a radical solution to the question of black equality in the form of violence. Wright believed that African American writers historically failed to properly represent their race and instead pandered to white people, which led him to develop a drastically different approach towards his writing of black equality. While the story was published in the late 1930’s, making it technically not a work of the Civil Rights movement, the story was clearly a precursor to many of the different forms of literary protest that would emerge as a result of the Civil Rights movement. His new ideas helped bring forth a new wave of energy and life for the struggle of equal rights, a movement that was led by African Americans for African Americans, not white people. ...