Celebrate Chicago Black History by Reading Richard Wright

It’s no secret Chicago has a brilliant, expansive history of Black artistry. 

As the birthplace of endless excellent Black-engineered music, the Chicago Black Arts movement, the modern urban social sciences from the Chicago School of Sociology and the Chicago Black Renaissance — the city seems to stand proud with a firm history of Black craftsmanship. 

One of the most notable figures of the Chicago Black Renaissance is the author, poet and creative Richard Wright. Born in Mississippi in 1908, Wright moved throughout the South before migrating North to Chicago at 18 and living on the South Side for a decade before moving to New York City. 

The Chicago Black Renaissance is the term used to refer to a movement of Black creatives living in the Near South Side and South Side neighborhoods — referred to as the Chicago Black Belt — during the early-1930s up until the mid-1950s. Prominent neighborhoods in this movement were Hyde Park and Bronzeville. 

As we tip on the latter side of the 2020s, we’re now also almost a century apart from the genesis of the Chicago Black Renaissance. A hundred years later, there’s still lessons to be learned from the visionaries of the Chicago Black Belt.

There’s stark similarities between the twenties of both the 20th and the 21st century. Chicago residents in the early 1930s also faced a nationally and locally politically tumultuous time, the quagmire ethics of new technology and reeled through various rising socioracial tensions

As a Chicago resident in 2026, I find the literary works of Richard Wright to be moving, honest and powerful while never verbose or overpowering — his work still seems to speak to the broad-shouldered Chicago many think of today. 

Wright’s prose is precise, but never curt. His imagery and language is evocative, but not graphic. And the themes he explores are radical, properly radical for the late-1930s. 

Some may argue Wright’s work may be more radical in the modern American political landscape — one where the U.S. President repeals and defunds affirmative action and social equity organizations altogether. 

With the context of the Trump administration banning the term “Black” from government and public organizations, looking back at a hypersegregated America seems to be a warped looking glass. This isn’t only because of desegregation, but also because it acknowledges the existence and hindrances of racial boundaries.

Wright’s work broadly draws from Marxist thought. Yet, his work builds off his theories and applies them to an American context — moving beyond what Karl Marx, a 19th century German idealist, could offer to American socioeconomic liberation.

His most famous work, “Native Son,” is a novel set in the hypersegregated 1930s Chicago South Side and has numerous modern-day film and theater adaptations. These works play with the modern application of Wright’s liberation commentary and look beyond his ideology — following in his footsteps

Wright’s work is melancholic, honest and ever-relevant to contemporary life in America. As the Trump administration removes diversity, equality and inclusion initiatives, the value of the American dollar plummets, the AI-bubble seems to careen toward bursting and ICE appears to be a reincarnation of slave-catching, America seems to have changed very little in the past century. 

The works of Richard Wright don’t just have to be celebrated as history this Black History month. They can also be exalted as narrative works of American social action, commentary and theory applicable even in the contemporary period.