ABSTRACT
At first, the young writer scarcely knew that he wanted to write, only that he wanted to read. But American racism – the white supremacist ideology that reached its nadir in the southern states that Wright called home – worked to frustrate even this modest ambition. Legislation enforcing a kind of apartheid throughout this region, among other things, did all it could to deny black southerners the right to an education (see Chronology, p. 47). State courts withheld money from black schools, prevented black pupils from entering the professions and even went so far as to ban black readers from municipal libraries. To those who were alert to such matters, however, this vicious legislation was itself built upon a paradox. Racist ideology publicly denigrated the intellectual capacity of African-Americans. But the effect of racist laws was ironically to acknowledge this capacity and to deny it the materials that it needed if it was to flourish. As the historian of the black South Leon F. Litwack has suggested:
Curtailing the educational opportunities of blacks, along with segregation and disfranchisement, were important mechanisms of racial control. . . . A story that would make the rounds among blacks . . . revealed . . . a marvelous insight into the workings of the white mind. As he was leaving the railroad depot with a northern visitor, a southern white man saw two Negroes, one asleep and the other reading a newspaper. He kicked the Negro reading a newspaper. ‘Would you please explain that?’ the Northerner asked. ‘I don’t understand it. I would think that if you were going to kick one you would kick the lazy one who’s sleeping.’ The white southerner replied, ‘That’s not the one we’re worried about.’1
