black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

All literature is protest.

Richard Wright

We invented a medium of exchange, mined silver and gold, made pottery and cutlery, we fashioned tools and utensils of brass, bronze, ivory, quartz, and granite.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Brass Bronze exchange Fashion Granite Made Medium Silver Utensil
Love grows from stable relationships, shared experience, loyalty, devotion, trust.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Devotion Experience Grow Love Loyalty Relationship
We had our own literature, our own systems of law, religion, medicine, science, and education.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Education Literature Medicine Own Religion Science System
If you’ve a notion of what man’s heart is, wouldn’t you say that maybe the whole effort of man on earth to build a civilization is simply man’s frantic and frightened attempt to hide himself from himself?
RICHARD WRIGHT

Attempt Civilization Earth Effort Frantic Frightened Notion Say
I could think of nothing. And, slowly, it was upon exactly that nothingness that my mind began to dwell, that constant sense of wanting without having, of being hated without reason.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Began Constant Could Hate Mind Nothingness Reason Sense Slowly Upon Want
The spirit I had caught gave me insight into the suffering of others, made me gravitate toward those whose feelings were like my own, made me sit for hours while others told me of their lives, made me strangely tender and cruel, violent and peaceful.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Gratitude Hour Like Live Made Peacefully Spirit Suffer Tender Violent
I was leaving the South to fling myself into the unknown . . .
RICHARD WRIGHT

Darling Leaving Myself Rain South Unknown Wind
You usually take it for granted and think you know us, but our history is far stranger than you suspect, and we are not what we seem.
RICHARD WRIGHT

City Grant History Pavement Seem Stranger Suspect Take Think
I was taking a part of the South to transplant in alien soil, to see if it could grow differently, if it could drink of new and cool rains, bend in strange winds, respond to the warmth of other suns and, perhaps, to bloom
RICHARD WRIGHT

Bloom Differently Drink Perhaps South Strange Transplant Warm Wind
I was not leaving the south to forget the south, but so that some day I might understand it
RICHARD WRIGHT

Day Forget Learn Leaving might Some South Understand
We black and they white. They got things and we ain’t. They do things and we can’t. It’s just like livin’ in jail.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Black Country Jail Living People Thing White
The locomotive of my heart was rushing down a dangerously steep slope, heading for a collision, heedless of the warning red lights that blinked all about me, the sirens and the ells and the screams that filled the air.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Ait Blink Collision Down Fill Heading Heedless Red Rush Scream Steep
Kill them, turn back time to the moment before I had talked so that I could have another chance to save myself.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Another Back Before Talk Chance Kill Moment Myself Save Turn
What could I dream of that had the barest possibility of coming true?
RICHARD WRIGHT

Barest Coming Dream Justice Pososblity Thinking True
Goddamnit, look! We live here and they live there.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Black Goddamnit Jail Life White
A mode of being that the way of life about me had said could not be, must not be, and upon which the penalty of death had been placed.
RICHARD WRIGHT

Could Death Emotion Mode Must Penalty Place Sad Said Way

All literature is protest.

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All literature is protest.

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