Understanding Richard Wright's Black Boy: A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents

by Robert Felgar

Overview

In Black Boy, Richard Wright triumphs over an ugly, racist world by fashioning an inspiring, powerful, beautiful, and fictionalized autobiography. To help students understand and appreciate his story in the cultural, political, racial, social, and literary contexts of its time, this casebook provides a rich source of primary historical documents, collateral readings, and commentary. The selection of unique documents is designed to place in sharp relief the issue of pervasive racism in American society. Documents include excerpts from other autobiographies and a novel, legal documents, speeches, an interview, an anthropological study, magazine and newspaper articles, and contemporary editorials. Most of the documents are available in no other printed form.

From Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and W.E.B. Du Bois on the one hand, to Black Codes, Jim Crow laws, and white supremacist pronouncements on the other, Felgar creates a dialogue between the voices of oppressed blacks, including Richard Wright, and those of oppressing whites over the issue of race and racism. Students will be able to analyze a variety of perspectives on this issue from the earliest days of the American republic to the present day. Felgar also includes primary documents on the American dream of success, which has remained elusive for so many blacks. A chapter on the American autobiographical tradition uses excerpts from Ben Franklin's autobiography, as well as from those by Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and W.E.B. Du Bois, to place Wright squarely in the tradition of this genre and show that Wright was more a believer in the myth of perpetual upward mobility than he realized. In a chapter called The Dream Deferred, documents show how freed blacks were just as enslaved by new and restrictive laws after the Civil War as they had been under slavery. Each chapter concludes with study questions, ideas for written and oral examination, and suggested readings to aid students in examining the issues raised by Wright's autobiography.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780313302213
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	04/08/1998
Series:	The Greenwood Press "Literature in Context" Series
Pages:	184
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.44(d)
Lexile:	1270L (what's this?)
Age Range:	13 Years

About the Author

ROBERT FELGAR is Professor of English at Jacksonville State University in Jacksonville, Alabama. He is author of Richard Wright (1980), as well as numerous articles on black literature, Robert Browning, and Mississippi writers. He directed two Summer Seminars for School Teachers on The Achievement of Richard Wright under the sponsorship of the National Endowments for the Humanities. He is currently writing articles on Wright's novel Native Son.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Literary Analysis: Themes and Structure of Black Boy
The Autobiographical Tradition
From Ben Franklin, The Autobiography
From Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
From Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery
From W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk
The American Dream of Success
Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence
The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments
Crèvecoeur, "What Is an American?"
From George Randolph Chester, Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford
The Dream Deferred
From the Black Code, Jim Crow, and The 1890 Mississippi Constitution
From Up from Slavery
From The Souls of Black Folk
Interview with Clyde Cox, Who Grew Up in Mississippi in the 1930s and 1940s
Race and Racism, Then and Now
From Joseph Alexander Tillinghast, The Negro in Africa and America (1902)
From Ray Stannard Baker, "A Study of Mob Justice, South and North" (1905)
From William Graham Sumner, Folkways (1906)
From Jean Finot, Race Prejudice (1906)
Alfred Holt Stone, "Is Race Friction Between Blacks and Whites in the United States Growing and Inevitable?" (1907-1908)
Theodore Bilbo, Remarks Made Before the U.S. Senate about Black Boy (1945)
Jonathan Tilove, "Scars of Slavery" (1994)
William C. Singleton III, "White? Black? Multi? Bi?" (1996)
Index

Editorial Reviews

Gr 8 Up-A comprehensive historical approach to this important book. Whether students are reading the censored version from 1945 or the 1991 unexpurgated text combining both Black Boy and American Hunger, this critical companion remains a significant supplement to understanding the cultural and political milieu in which both Wright and his autobiography were formed. Beginning with a somewhat confusing and overloaded chapter on traditional literary structure and themes, Felgar launches into subsequent sections comprised mostly of primary-source material. In the second section, Wright is placed with other autobiographers with excerpts from Benjamin Franklin, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and W.E.B. Du Bois. Documents such as the Declaration of Independence and the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments situate his life and work within a cultural and social framework defining the "American Dream," which is, in the fourth section, exposed for its race, gender, and class exclusions. And finally, essays regarding slavery's inception in America, racial incidences of the 19th and 20th centuries, and present-day issues combine to form the basis for dialogue and discovery. The textbook format provides short, guiding commentaries; questions for discussion or writing; and suggestions for further reading, making this a detailed and insightful complement to Wright's book.-Kate Foldy, Northern Kentucky Univ., Highland Heights, KY

School Library Journal

To help students comprehend and appreciate the cultural, political, racial, social, and literary contexts of the 1945 fictionalized autobiography, Felgar (English, Jacksonville State U., Alabama) provides a casebook of primary historical documents, collateral readings, and commentary. Among the documents are excerpts from other autobiographies and a novel, legal documents, speeches, an interview, an anthropological study, and contemporary magazine and newspaper articles. Study questions are included for each. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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