Richard Wright’s Novel About Racist Police Violence Was Rejected in 1941; It Has Just Been Published

Nearly 80 years ago, Richard Wright became one of the most famous Black writers in the United States with the publication of “Native Son,” a novel whose searing critique of systemic racism made it a best-seller and inspired a generation of Black writers. In 1941, Wright wrote a new novel titled “The Man Who Lived Underground,” but publishers refused to release it, in part because the book was filled with graphic descriptions of police brutality by white officers against a Black man. His manuscript was largely forgotten until his daughter Julia Wright unearthed it at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University. “The Man Who Lived Underground” was not published in the 1940s because white publishers did not want to highlight “white supremacist police violence upon a Black man because it was too close to home,” says Julia Wright. “It’s a bit like lifting the stone and not wanting the worms, the racist worms underneath, to be seen.”
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[@rebahenderson211]

I am so thankful Julia Wright will publish her father Richard's book THE MAN WHO LIVED UNDERGROUND because so many whites in this country want to believe lies instead of truth.

[@36cmbr]

I remember encountering the novel, Native Son, in college. What a breath of fresh air it was to hear the long unspoken truth taking form in my life. You may be sure I was proud and feeling happy deep inside to read that book. Rest In Power. Another great interview by Ms. Goodman.

[@emilygrace5145]

Thank God for Julia Wright your father would be so proud of you!

[@queenayana9564]

Richard Wright was the popular author during my High School days, we passed his books to one to the other. I remember one of his books was so worn by the time it got to me, I read it anyway and passed it on. Once you get into it you just can't put it down.

[@pearlbarkley1019]

I have always loved Richard Wright!!! He is one of the BEST!!!! I have recommended Native Son to many!!!

[@francessimmonds5784]

How can anyone drag someone until they're dismembered while alive! 😪

[@dgmgneco1516]

W ---- HATRED

[@cookiegilcrest1000]

Satan came but for to kill, steal, destroy.

[@dgmgneco1516]

@Marsha Scott james //donald jazz musician

[@carrieullrich5059]

Just like our government to waste time bugging the foreign home of a writer who did nothing but leave America because American publishers were too afraid to publish his work. 😥

[@moniqueloomis9772]

They weren't afraid! They were complicit!

[@syedsalam3199]

This despicable human drama is played all over the world. Only thing different is the face of the perpetrators.

[@tyronerowesr2858]

NO THE FACE IS THE SAME... SOME TIME THEY HID BEHIND THE DOOR....THE BLACK VETERAN FOR JUSTICE PA NY SC....

[@druth5134]

Some people can't sleep or wake up without seeing someone else suffer , and most are educated professionals .

[@cherrymisha4797]

Goodness, this is a good interview!!💕🔥🔥

[@abdulraheem415]

I agree with u..OMG! there should be a part 2! The older I get, the more I realize that we AA have been fighting this system of oppression for a long time. It shows its ugly nature each passing century in different forms. And society is not getting better it is just getting better at sophistication...

[@OurMackeyAndDottieShow]

My sixth grade teacher made us read 📚his books and I'm glad to know the truth.

[@brendajohnson5525]

Our stories are just beginning to be told. ✊🏽

[@Mont3000]

Needs to be told in school.

[@cornellfinney2855]

@@Mont3000 It won't be told by the beast nation in our life time.

[@emilygrace5145]

Native Son is a classic piece of literature! I love the book and i only just read it this year 2021. Best book! His words are powerful.

[@abdiaadamsbey685]

I attended Uppsala College and wrote about Richard Wright’s Native Son. He is one of my favorite

[@MacAutomationTips]

I read nearly all of Richard Wright’s books back in college. His biograrphy, Black Boy, should be a standard selection for high school literature courses, instead of To Kill a Mockingbird. Wright also was probably the first Black author to write (his book, Black Power) about his trip to Ghana, in which he explores the meaning of power. I’m looking forward to reading The Man Who Lived Underground. It was sheer racism that it wasn’t published back in the day.

[@mn-m6015]

Wow thank you Democarcy Now

[@jayone3442]

Richard Wright is one of the most influential people for the young inspiring writer I was in elementary school!!!!!!

[@morganalefey5884]

thank you so much for letting us know this man existed and wrote this makes us all see things in a different way and makes us know that everything black lives is saying now is true everything we see is not new it's something that's been going on since the beginning

[@christinianamariahsain19]

True Wisdom What A Beautiful Woman… ♥️

[@queenmommie8295]

APTTMHY HalleluYah 👏🏻👏🏽👏👏🏼

[@ana-OM]

... Beautiful, Beautiful Woman. Yes❤

[@christinianamariahsain19]

@@queenmommie8295 Amen… 🙏🏼 🙏🏽🙏🏾

[@christinianamariahsain19]

@@ana-OM She Truly Is With Such Wisdom… ♥️

[@ana-OM]

@@christinianamariahsain19 Wisdom, Beauty, Soul 🥰🤌

[@emilygrace5145]

This whole interviewed me cry. Can you even imagine being silenced for so long and look how old his daughter is here. I can't even understand how I got the book in the first place.

[@lemurianchick]

If it's true. I could totally see the cabal writing a book and using his name. Seems very convenient timing...

[@think32]

@@lemurianchick I'm very confused by your attempt to discredit this work and defend white supremacy. Do you have any tangible evidence to cast doubt on this story?

[@queenmommie8295]

Yah and Mother Wisdom lead her to his words to bring truth for such a time as this. Give God all of the praises in all things happening here on the earth 🌎.

[@reforest4fertility]

@@think32 Yeah, not very Lemurian of her.

[@lemurianchick]

@@think32 Do you have any proof that it's true, SJW bully? I'm half-Puerto Rican. My great grandfather was said to have been an African slave. So you can take your BLM Soros-funded talking points, stick them up Uranus...and rotate.

[@valeriehaider3273]

Heartbreaking.. incredible strength.. courage..

[@ana-OM]

YES💔💦💖🌟

[@geraldinehearn7725]

Sending Gratitude to Wright the descendants of our ancestors 🙌🏾😞

[@PhilipRhoadesP]

Wow! What a historical blockbuster! - amazing . .

[@newgx67]

I really wish someone would do a remake of the film The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

[@taylordupree6065]

Amy when you get gems like this woman on your show, Make Time

[@autumnhomer9786]

🎀I’m looking forward to buying the book 😊. It’s a shame that it was suppressed for so long but at last, it’s here.🎀

[@letaureau3622]

Can't wait the book to be published and I'm more then glad Julia is still alive . So sad and more then disturbing this country will never change.

[@mariarobertson9772]

One of my favorite authors I was exposed to in high school and college. Can't wait to buy the novel !

[@lindawpatton4201]

Got the book! Excited about reading it. Its time has come! Blessings, Julia Wright for sharing this precious gift.

[@emilygrace5145]

"Politics is a hard and narrow game; its policies represents the aggregate desires and aspirations of millions of people. It's goals are rigid and simply drawn, and the minds of the majority of the politicians are set, congealed in terms of daily tactical maneuvers." -Richard Wright Native Son Great book. A Novel. A classic bestseller and a motion picture.

[@sarahcollier1287]

. p

[@cynthiahaynes-james114]

And they say that the United States is not a racist country. My shouts. Peace ✌

[@sookiesabstracts4363]

BULLSHIT........

[@willieperson9751]

It is so sad that America has very few white womens like Amy Goodman ♥️⭐👍🏿

[@adriancutner4814]

This is one of the annoying things that I often criticize Democracy Now about. They should dedicate entire broadcasts to such important historical figures like Richard Wright, instead of a 20 Minuit segment at the end of a broadcast.

[@morayoung3183]

My heart breaks listening to the suffering of my brothers and sisters in pain and inspires me to fight back

[@Xavier-uknonada]

Good job Julia

[@normahamilton2985]

It should be a movie. This is the EXCEPTIONAL AMERICA!!

[@ansuajo]

Tongue in cheek completely

[@normahamilton2985]

@@ansuajo Do you even know the meaning of that idiom?

[@ansuajo]

@@normahamilton2985 do you know what tongue in cheek means

[@normahamilton2985]

@@ansuajo As a former teacher, I could school you.

[@ansuajo]

@@normahamilton2985 by your vile tone you must have damaged generations of kids with your abuse and projection of insecurities lol

[@freshencounter]

Thank you!

[@richardalanlovell]

I really enjoyed the broadcast, and even purchased the novel from Amazon.

[@nitarobinson9511]

We need a longer interview Amy

[@sknmwms6516]

Great to hear about this! Cannot wait to read. I worked at his elementary school which has been turned into THE SMITH ROBERTSON MUSEUM, in Jackson, Mississippi. There was a documentary shot there about his living in Jackson.

[@ana-OM]

Julia Wright thank You, father-author-actor...Richard Wright thank You, young Darmela Frazier thank You. I can't wait to read the original book. Watch the movie. I have portuguese identity documents, am living in Germany for over 50 years. I remember my school time in portugal. I was then to learn about the "great colonies" in Africa, "possessions" of that small country portugal. I never was taught about the genocide on Africans - the blood soaked hands of portuguese. I was never taught about the exploitation. I was never taught about the destruction of African cultur. I never was taught about the slave trade of Africans to the America's by portuguese. We was thought in school about the goods and treasures to be found on "our colonies". We was thought about our "superior race". I remember the revolution, 1975 in portugal. I remember witnessing the white refugees fleeing, at that time period : "independence" of the "African colonies". I remember my sweet friendships to indigenous of Angola, Cabo Verde, Guiné Bissau, Timor (next to Australia). They were living in very, very poor conditions, and through day in-day out on pending deportation, back to their countries of origin. My focus then was our friendship and playtime. Less their agony and fears, poverty and discrimination. I believe portuguese of today live in denial of their rassism but still their delusion of superiority. It goes deep, the superiority delusion of us "whites". This is my frustration and the motiv, writing here. Learning Julia Wright is in portugal. An reflex of alert, protect, confort ??? Well, I guess it is not my subject to make awareness. Anybody that wants to see, it's in plain sight. Everywhere, anywhere: Xenophobia I live as an ordinary foreign worker in Germany. I have no sense of "motherland or fatherland". Does not exist in me, and I feel very good about this fact !! I watch "Demokratie Now" 👍. For Beautiful Julia Wright, I wish bright Sunshine Ray's, to enjoy and nourish. humble and sincere

[@jamielunes1841]

Yale had the book all along?

[@patlynch6517]

It's in a collection of rare books and old manuscripts - humidity controlled, so the papers don't disintegrate. - like the Gutenberg Bible.

[@emilygrace5145]

Injustice. Thank God she pursued everything. The People should pursue Yale for other writinging withheld from young minds.

[@Don-md6wn]

@@emilygrace5145 You apparently have no idea how archives work. There's no evidence Yale was withholding anything. Wright's estate made the decision to have his work stored there and Wright's daughter didn't even know the manuscript existed for 40 years after his death.

[@mzny4314]

@@Don-md6wn it’s f’ked up either way you look at it.

[@Don-md6wn]

@@mzny4314 That doesn't make it Yale's fault.

[@mackenziedog1872]

So this is why I grew up to a song called mccarthers park. The graphic stuff this woman describes, and it's always police. I texted my nurse... I'm not believed and have done six years solitary on liquid survival food in solitary with brain damage

[@mackenziedog1872]

Victoria university had a guarded book room I read under guard a very rare book about Ford, the car production line inventor. The rest of uni was a disaster

[@roseofsharon4872]

@Mackenzie dog, What's the name of the book?.

[@haircole]

It’s truly sad .....I thought this problem of out time.

[@marlbankian]

Food for thought

[@zacharyrivera566]

I'm a firm believer in Carma and the police will suffer for their actions when the people say enough is enough.

[@emilygrace5145]

Yes once people have educated themselves on the depths of the subject. Ignorance never wins its the wisdom of words in the book that will light a fire under the ass of the ones who want to speak of justice.

[@think32]

I've found no evidence that karma actually exists. History shows that most powerful people who protect themselves by concealing information live full, cozy lives and are rarely held accountable.

[@zacharyrivera566]

@@think32 Tell that to Marie Antoinette.

[@think32]

@@zacharyrivera566 Not sure if I understand. Mind breaking it down for me?

[@JJ-fq4nl]

@@think32 you really don’t know what happened to Marie Antoinette? Did you drop out of middle school?

[@christopherdavis8248]

9:15 "Outside of time and space, He looked down upon the earth and saw that each fleeting day was a day of dying, that men died slowly with each passing moment as much as they did in war that human grief and sorrow were utterly insufficient to this vast, dreary spectacle..."

[@queenofweaves916]

I just want to say I love your channel. Thank you for using your platform to lift all of our voices. With that said, Richard Wright is one of the authors that inspired my own journey into creative writing. I've read several of his books. I had a very traumatic childhood, and Richard often wrote of childhood trauma and poverty. This is what drew me to his work as a young child. I will spend my summer revisiting his work, along with other classic Black authors.

[@Jaherrm]

Richard Wright also wrote his autobiography, Black Boy, about his experiences growing up in the Jim Crow South.

[@buckeyewill2166]

Confederate Fascist Senator Theodore Bilbo openly denounced the book as trash on the floor of the Senate. The State of Mississippi banned the book.

[@sleepingbeauty3239]

Is law enforcement being subject to the remote neural monitoring and mind control technologies too? Who's being punished for assaulting Americans with these weapons and technologies?

[@fishinghuntingfool]

Very interesting thought 🤔

[@sleepingbeauty3239]

@@fishinghuntingfool Can't help but to wonder when there are articles and news stories coming out every week about Americans being assaulted with microwave mind control weapons. This has been going on for a long time.

[@haircole]

What s great interview

[@lansanakoroma2398]

Every man by nature should know when you are in good hands because all of us have fillings and eyes to see

[@Lanative91]

This one brought me to tears

[@dayarode3685]

I am currently reading that book for English class.

[@briezzy365]

Wow... what horrible treatment of an Icons daughter.

[@HughJass-jv2lt]

😆😆 You must be new to DN... 😆😆

[@queenmommie8295]

Mother Wisdom lead you to that book to bring the truth out about his people being slawder in the streets. He who has eyes to see and ears to hear. 👏🏻👏🏽👏👏🏼 Give God all of the praises and glory for bringing out the real truth. Yah is making her speak truth to the people.

[@jaws6307]

Free Mumia Abu-Jamal now!

[@valeriehaider3273]

Incredible writer..

[@Anubis-hm7ro]

Thank you

[@livefromplanetearth]

Love

[@AdrianWheeler-xm9ml]

Richard Wright's prose is a labyrinth of lyrical consciousness

[@marypittman4279]

VERY LOVELY LADY😊😊😊. BEEN TIME TO GET RID OF QUALIFIED IMMUNITY!!! IT'S A GOD DAM SHAME FOR SO CALL POLICE TO LITTERALLY JUST KILL A HUMAN BEING JUST BECAUSE .WHEN GOD CREATED THIS WORLD HE DIDN'T CARVE THE WORD PRIVILEGED IN MUZUGU PEOPLE'S FACE .FOR THEM TO DO ATROCIOUS THINGS LIKE THAT THEN AND NOW IS JUST PLAIN EVIL ..

[@FrancisE.Dec.Esquire]

I have purchased exterminate all the brutes on Amazon and it always makes weep at Channel 1, my great grandfather was Cherokee and my Great Grandmother told me about the Trail of Tears. I am 73 Years old Oklahoma man, and America's exterminate all the brutes theology still makes me weep.

[@davidbaker6941]

The novel by Richard Wright " Uncle Toms Children" was a graphic look at institutional racism in America during the early twentieth century.

[@alin81-82]

I hate it when DN runs out of time on a guest. Can't they make more time?

[@vinniecasqer840]

"COVID-19 RNA Based Vaccines and the Risk of Prion Diseases" - Microbiology & Infectious Diseases journal

[@vinniecasqer840]

The main tool the scam artist uses is "distraction" of their mark.

[@buckeyewill2166]

Richard Wright had to leave America….he channeled raw anger on paper. I read Black Boy in high school in the 70s….Trumpsters would have banned the book for being too raw for America.

[@vinniecasqer840]

"Understanding Scam Victims" - University of Cambridge.

[@ivajloberberov1732]

Hi . Richard Wright book 📚 was simply not banned 🚫. It was available at the library of Congress since the beginning. Since the 1940's there have been many many many ",So called Unpublished books. If you Got s dollars you can publish anything in the 1940'S America. Distribution is another obstacle to reach readers of All ages. Remember saving lunch money to own Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Fin, Pipi Long stocking -,Lunch money. Shalom from West Sacramento California.

[@haircole]

The Yale library is the great

[@akbarfarzin9857]

That is good Book to Read !!!! To know America better!!!!

[@Rey-Nolds]

Richard Wright...My Man.

[@anthonyosei6821]

I will search out Richard Wrights book,,I sounds very interesting 🤨

[@susanwatson3687]

How did Yale get it? And Yale shouldn’t get a dime.

[@Don-md6wn]

Because the executor of his estate decided to store his manuscripts and letters there.

[@tomitstube]

inspiring, that's what should be taken from richard and julia wright.

[@vinniecasqer840]

DARPA "Brain Initiative". New normal disguising new monsters.

[@lornaware3096]

The TRUTH is hated.... 🤐🤐🤐

[@junebug7923]

Very poignant interview....this lady is continuing her dad's legacy....and I hope there is one to continue hers

[@ktonyhudson]

Richard Wright was a great writer.

[@dickmoney2946]

The only reason it’s being published now is because it doesn’t threaten anyone or anything. Completely irrelevant to 2021. Another DN nostalgia moment.

[@seansmith3058]

Ralph Ellison also used the perspective of the underground man (borrowed from Dostoevsky) in Invisible Man.

[@v1v2x3]

You are seriously comparing 1941 to 2021?

[@themarbleking]

Unfortunately in regards to hate and injustice, you can! Cops were killing black people then at even greater rates than in 21. Or did you think they only started to be small time youtube stars when cellphone cameras became common.

[@edwardmiessner6502]

Police were having a field day with black, brown, and gay and lesbian white people. I remember an account I read in a Boston gay weekly newspaper about police beating up gay men in Boston in the 1940s something that I had never heard of happening contemporaneously in the 80s

[@tyronerowesr2858]

YES.... NOTHING HAS CHANGED... WS...STILL IN CONTROL...

[@ansuajo]

Escape from the "land of freedom" and false mythology to *just survive*

[@moussaouiahmed]

................................................AM

[@thebookkeeper8404]

Senators Kristen Cinema and Joe Manchin - GET BEHIND OUR PRESIDENT ! GET BEHIND THE MAJORITY OF AMERICANS !

[@marlonconnors965]

Mam have you ever thought of bringing Neely Fuller the100 year old justice practicing, logic exuding, Counter White Supremacists r is one of the most important people subversively in the concept of the country we call America.

[@haircole]

OMG. Police brutality isn’t a new thing. 😮 I’m so surprised ...........................yes; being sarcastic

[@moniqueloomis9772]

Sarcasm is a welcome coping skill. ☺

[@IDidNotAsk4ThisHandle]

I become so confused with blackFolk in that era….all the trials&tribulations they endured but still turn around and nest between the legs of WW and/or WM🤔

[@BG-cw8fu]

doesn’t answer the questions asked

[@MrEkzotic]

False.