Richard Wright

“The impulse to dream was slowly beaten out of me by experience. Now it surged up again and I hungered for books, new ways of looking and seeing.”
Richard Wright quote

“Men can starve from a lack of self-realization as much as they can from a lack of bread.”
Richard Wright quote

After reading "The Ethics of living Jim Crow", I have gotten a new perspective of the struggles of African Americans. Richard's education of Jim Crow was almost to hard to read. The beatings from his mom, coworkers and I am sure others he does not tell us about in the story creates an over whelming sympathy within me. The pain Richard suffers drips from the pages as he describes the broken glass bottle cutting his neck and then instead of comfort from his mom she beats him until he was physically sick. He goes on to tell about his jobs and how black people are "taught" to stay in their place. White men seem to be the teachers of the Jim Crow education in Mississippi.
The story is very sad to me because Richard looks at the world through non-rascal eyes at first and by the end of the story he lies and becomes a thief to make it in the world. The only good coming from the story is Richard has used the hate to gain access to books. I think it is sweet revenge when he uses Jim Crow to get the one thing whites don't want him to have which is education.