R. Wright: A Mixed Media Appreciation

The novelist Richard Wright was born in 1908, so over the course of this year, groups of scholars, students, writers, and general readers have organized and participated in activities celebrating Wright's work. The events honoring Wright have taken place all across the country and in France, where Wright lived the last years of his life.

The other day, we received notice about a blog post highlighting a 1992 celebration of Wright. Check it out.

Last spring, the Black Studies program organized a small reading group for black male college students from Tougaloo College, Morehouse, and SIUE to discuss Wright's autobiography using a blog and email. The project was entitled The Wright 100 and served as a model for what we would do with the Interactive Reading Group. The Wright 100 program also led us to produce a few videos focusing on Wright, and we're sharing one of those productions for our Friday post.

So here, we're offering a short rendition based on the opening lines of Wright's 12 Million Black Voices. The photographs are from the Farm Security Administration images, the ones Wright used for his book. The accompanying music is John Coltrane's "Equinox."