Richard Wright Birthplace and Natchez Trace Landscape

Richard Wright, author of 'Native Son' (1940) and 'Black Boy' (1945), was born in 1908 near Natchez on a plantation along the Natchez Trace; his memoir 'Black Boy' opens with vivid scenes of the Natchez landscape and documents the sharecropping and racial terror culture of the region that formed his literary vision. Wright became one of the most important American writers of the 20th century, and the Natchez area is the geographic origin of his work.