Richard Wright, Joe Louis, and America’s racist soul

Few writers understood America’s racist soul as keenly as Richard Wright (pictured above), and few used their pen as mercilessly as he did as a weapon to excoriate and expose it. In black heavyweight champion and ring legend, Joe Louis, Wright found the perfect symbol of black resistance to the conceits of a dominant culture wallowing in the abyss of white supremacy. Wright’s treatment of Louis’…