'A faint, wry, bitter smile': Richard Wright and media representations of African Americans

Richard Wright's major works of the early 1940s--- Native Son (1940) and 112 Million Black Voices (1941)---protest the racism of the mainstream media and advance positive images of African American life. Through his exploration of the media's power, he depicts the human toll caused in a historical moment when visual images were gaining currency and presents alternative representations that accurately depict black life. In this thesis, I identify and analyze the ways Wright challenges representations of African Americans across film, print media, and photography. In Native Son, Wright protests media representations of African Americans by highlighting the demonization of Bigger Thomas by the mainstream media. 112 Million Black Voices complements Native Son through its effort to realistically portray African Americans. My first chapter explores Bigger Thomas's experience as an audience member of Trader Horn, through which Wright demonstrates that Hollywood representations of African Americans deceive black people into entering an inherently unfair racial and economic system only to punish them for attempting to cross racial and economic boundaries. In my second chapter, I argue that Bigger's journalistic treatment dehumanizes him and convinces white society of the necessity of his execution. In this way, Wright suggests that newspapers possess a kind of legal authority over black life. The final chapter of my thesis examines the significance of photography in Wright's 1941 photobook 112 Million Black Voices. In this work, Wright utilizes Farm Security Administration photographs---taken by white photographers---to replace negative mainstream representations of African Americans with positive and realistic representations of black life through the history of black people in the United States from the beginning of slavery up until his present day. In this way, Wright challenges white supremacy by recontextualizing African Americans within African American history.