(1908 – 1960) After a difficult childhood described in his auto-biography Black Boy (1945), Wright moved from Tennessee to Chicago, IL in 1927 hoping to become a writer. In the Depression he belonged to the Communist Party; in 1935, he also joined the Federal Writers Project of the Works Progress Administration. By 1937 he moved away from the Communist Party and Chicago, resettling in Harlem, NY. In 1938 Wright published Uncle Tom’s Children. Two years later, Native Son, comparable in impact to Ellison’s Invisible Man, cemented Wright’s international reputation, especially in Europe. His study of Kwame Nkrumah (Black Power, 1954) contributed to his influence among Pan-Africanists and provided a term for American black militants when the Civil Rights movement began to falter.