The Centennial Richard Wright Conference in Paris

Abstract

followed, if not in his footsteps, then certainly in the wake of his literary trail. Consequently, several centennial celebrations emerged throughout 2008 at several university sites throughout the United States, Europe, and even in Japan; an indisputable indication of the profundity and universality of his literature. Indeed, this native son from the segregated South, who had to engage in trickery to check out books from the public library, could not have foreseen such literary immortality. But 2008 was not the first year writers and scholars heralded and reconsidered the significant contributions of Wright. The December 1968 issue of Negro Digest celebrated the life and legacy of Wright 60 years since his birth in Natchez, Mississippi and eight years after his untimely death in Paris, France at the age of 52. In his essay On Wright, Wrong and Black Reality, John A. Williams exclaims that Wright's visionary literary expansion moved him to write: succinctly, if not always quite correctly, but with the awesome power he employed, what so many of us are trying clumsily to say today. It really makes you want to quit trying; he has said it all so well. Who among the current crop have been so bold as to explore the ramifications of racism in America, Europe, Africa and Asia? No one.1