Book contents
- Richard Wright in Context
- Richard Wright in Context
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Abbreviations
- Richard Wright’s Works: A Chronology
- Introduction Richard Wright’s Luck
- Part I Life and Career, Times and Places
- Part II Social and Cultural Contexts
- Chapter 6 Black Masculinity
- Chapter 7 Wright and African American Women
- Chapter 8 He Tried to Be a Communist
- Chapter 9 Liberalism and the Color Line
- Chapter 10 “The Same Stuff”
- Chapter 11 Moviegoers and Cinematic Seers in Wright’s Fiction
- Chapter 12 Clothing
- Chapter 13 “Defeat Measured in the Jumping Cadences of Triumph”
- Chapter 14 Wright and Religion
- Chapter 15 Bandung and Third-World Liberation
- Chapter 16 Black Paris, Hard-Boiled Paranoia, and the Cultural Cold War
- Part III Literary and Intellectual Contexts
- Part IV Reputation and Critical Reception
- Index
Chapter 10 - “The Same Stuff”
Native Son and Press Coverage of the Robert Nixon Trial
from Part II - Social and Cultural Contexts
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 July 2021
- Richard Wright in Context
- Richard Wright in Context
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Abbreviations
- Richard Wright’s Works: A Chronology
- Introduction Richard Wright’s Luck
- Part I Life and Career, Times and Places
- Part II Social and Cultural Contexts
- Chapter 6 Black Masculinity
- Chapter 7 Wright and African American Women
- Chapter 8 He Tried to Be a Communist
- Chapter 9 Liberalism and the Color Line
- Chapter 10 “The Same Stuff”
- Chapter 11 Moviegoers and Cinematic Seers in Wright’s Fiction
- Chapter 12 Clothing
- Chapter 13 “Defeat Measured in the Jumping Cadences of Triumph”
- Chapter 14 Wright and Religion
- Chapter 15 Bandung and Third-World Liberation
- Chapter 16 Black Paris, Hard-Boiled Paranoia, and the Cultural Cold War
- Part III Literary and Intellectual Contexts
- Part IV Reputation and Critical Reception
- Index
Summary
This chapter examines Wright’s critical appropriation of the Chicago Tribune’s coverage of the Robert Nixon murder trial (1938-39). Although Nixon was tried and executed for murdering Florence Johnson (a white woman), the Tribune routinely – and groundlessly – called the Black teenager a “rapist.” As Wright reminds us, if fascination with the condemned African American criminal dates back to the Puritan gallows ritual, the trope of the “Black beast rapist” evokes lynching in the post-Reconstruction South. With Native Son’s pointed revisions of the Tribune’s racist coverage, Wright exposes the press as the conduit by which the extrajudicial violence and dehumanizing rhetoric of the lynch mob entered the Northern courtroom.
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- Information
- Richard Wright in Context , pp. 108 - 117Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021