Richard Wright - Moving Away From America Transforming Him To An Internationalist And Africanist
Jun.30, 2008 in
Education
In 1946 Wright received an invitation to visit France having just met Jean Paul Sartre in New York. But he had problems securing a passport. He therefore enlists the help of several eminent personalities such Dorothy Norman who beefs up his credentials by appointing him co-editor of Twice a Year, Gertrude Stein, and anthropologist Claude Levi -Strauss the then French cultural attache who sends him an official invitation from the French government to visit Paris for a month. Armed with this, he thus leaves New York on May 1 1946. After he returned to the United States he decided he could no longer tolerate the racism he experienced even in New York City.