American writer Richard Wright

 
Richard Nathaniel Wright was born on September 4, 1908 near Natchez, Mississippi. The grandson of slaves and the son of a sharecropper, Wright was largely raised by his mother, a caring woman who became
a single parent after her husband left the family when Wright was five years old.
Schooled in Jackson, Mississippi, Wright only managed to get a ninth grade education, but he was a voracious reader and showed early on he had a gift with words. When he was 16, a short story of his was published in a southern African-American newspaper.
After leaving school, Wright worked a series of odd jobs. In his free time he delved into American literature, going so far as to forge a note so he could secure a library card.
The more he read about the world, the more he longed to see it and make a permanent break from the Jim Crow South. "I want my life to count for something," he told a friend.