Richard Wright, Writer, 52, Dies

November 30, 1960

OBITUARY

Special to THE NEW YORK TIMES

PARIS, Nov. 29--Richard Wright, the American Negro writer, died of a heart attack last night in a Paris clinic. He was 52 years old.

Mr. Wright, author of "Native Son" and "Black Boy," had lived abroad, mostly in Paris, for more than fifteen years. According to friends, he found here a greater degree of freedom from discrimination against members of his race than in his homeland.

Once attracted to communism, Mr. Wright was disillusioned and became notably anti- Communist during his stay in France. He refused to have any contact with the party here.

His most recent work, "Fishbelly," a study of Negro reaction to race prejudice and discrimination, was published recently.

Surviving Mr. Wright are his widow, Ellen, and two daughters, Julia and Rachel.

Eloquent Spokesman

Mr. Wright was hailed by critics as the most eloquent spokesman for the American Negro in this generation and one of the most important literary talents of contemporary America.

His greatest success, both financial and literary, was "Native Son," a harsh, realistic, brutal, angry novel that appeared in 1940. This story was based partly on Wright's own experiences in the Chicago slums and partly on the case of Robert Nixon, a Chicago Negro who was put to death in the electric chair in 1938 for the murder of a white girl.

The novel won almost universal acclaim from reviewers. Charles Poore in The New York Times said that it was "enormously stirring," and Peter Monro Jack, writing in The Sunday Times Book Review, called it the "Negro American tragedy."

"Native Son" was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection and enjoyed a large sale not only in the United States but also in most other countries, including the Soviet Union. Paul Green dramatized it for the stage. It was a hit on Broadway in 1941 with the late Canada Lee in the lead role of Bigger Thomas, the scared Negro boy who kills two persons and is captured and put to death.

In 1950 Mr. Wright made "Native Son" as a film in Argentina, with himself in the lead role. But he was a poor actor and the movie failed.

Born on Plantation

Mr. Wright's own life had made him bitter. He was born Sept. 4, 1908, on a plantation near Natchez, Miss. His mother was hard-working and devoted to her children, but his father was drunken and brutal. After his father deserted the family they moved to Memphis, Tenn., when Richard was 6 years old.

His genius with words was shown early; at the age of 14, a short story of his was published in a Negro paper in the South. He began to work at menial jobs in a Memphis optical business before going to Chicago by himself at the age of 19.

He worked as a porter, street cleaner, dishwasher, postal clerk, any odd job. Sometimes he was unemployed and hungry, and during the early Nineteen Thirties was on relief. It was then that he joined the Communist party. All the time he was writing about his experiences in fictional form.

In 1937, Mr. Wright was in the Federal Writers Project and the next year his book of four novellas, "Uncle Tom's Children," was published and won a $500 prize from Story magazine. He won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1939 and the next year "Native Son" made him independent and famous. In 1941 he won the Spingarn Medal as the American Negro who made the highest achievement during the preceding year.

Wrote Autobiography

His next big success was the autobiography of his youth, "Black Boy," issued in 1944. This was also a Book-of-the-Month Club choice and sold throughout the world. After World War II, Mr. Wright expatriated himself to Paris, where he could live more congenially with his white wife, Ellen Poplar of Brooklyn, whom he had married in 1940.

This coincided with Mr. Wright's break with the Communists, although he remained leftist, materialist and atheist. In 1950 he was one of several distinguished writers who contributed testimony to "The God That Failed," a disavowal by former Communists.

None of Mr. Wright's other books equaled "Native Son" and "Black Boy" in critical or commercial success, although all were reviewed with adequate publicity and respect. In 1953 appeared "The Outsider," a philosophical novel complicated with several murders; in 1954, "Black Power," his impressions of the Gold Coast of Africa; in 1956, "The Color Curtain," a report on the Bandung Conference in Java of Asian and African delegates; in 1957, "Pagan Spain," severely critical personal observations of Spain, and the same year, "White Man, Listen!" a lecture on the evils of racial injustice.

His "The Long Dream," published in 1958, a novel about a Negro corruptionist, was dramatized by Ketti Frings and presented unsuccessfully in New York this year.