The symposium doesn’t appear to have been Wright’s idea, but it could have been: he was a child of the cinema.

“ Native Son” was meant to shock: it tells the story of Bigger Thomas, a black Chicagoan who accidentally murders the daughter of his white employer, then kills his girlfriend, Bessie, while fleeing the police, and ultimately pays for his crimes in the electric chair. Hosted by the League of American Writers, a Communist-affiliated group for which Wright would soon be elected a vice-president, the symposium gathered soon-to-be-blacklisted screenwriters, the future production chief of MGM, and emerging leaders of the civil-rights movement to argue the merits of adapting Wright’s controversial novel. Urn:oclc:748294318 Republisher_operator Scandate 20120109153200 Scanner .“Should the Novel Native Son Be Made Into a Motion Picture?” This was the name of a symposium held at Hollywood’s Roosevelt Hotel in May, 1940-just two and a half months after the publication of Richard Wright’s best-selling novel. OL275128W Page-progression lr Page_number_confidence 94.17 Pages 534 Ppi 514 Related-external-id urn:isbn:0060830557 OL23244101M Openlibrary_subject long_now_manual_for_civilization Openlibrary_work Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 02:14:55 Bookplateleaf 0008 Boxid IA152501 Boxid_2 CH103201 Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II City New York Donorįriendsofthesanfranciscopubliclibrary Edition 1st Perennial Classics ed.

Wright richard native son