Richard Wright was born on a plantation near Natchez, Mississippi, on September 4, 1908. His father, Nathaniel, was an illiterate sharecropper and his mother, Ella Wilson, was a well-educated school teacher. The family’s extreme poverty forced them to move to Memphis when Richard was six years old. Soon after, his father left the family for another woman and his mother was forced to work as a cook in order to support the family. Richard briefly stayed in an orphanage during this period as well. His mother became ill while living in Memphis, so the family moved to Jackson, Mississippi, and lived with Ella’s mother.

Richard’s grandmother, a devout Seventh Day Adventist, enrolled him in a Seventh Day Adventist school near Jackson at the age of twelve. He also attended a local public school for a few years. In the spring of 1924 the Southern Register, a local black newspaper, printed his first story, "The Voodoo of Hell’s Half Acre." From 1925 to 1927, he worked several menial jobs in Jackson and Memphis. During this time he continued writing and discovered the works of H.L. Mencken, Theodore Dreiser, and Sinclair Lewis.

In 1927 he moved to Chicago, where he became a Post Office clerk until the Great Depression forced him to take on various temporary positions. During this time he became involved with the Communist Party, writing articles and stories for both the Daily Worker and New Masses. In April 1931, he published his first major story, "Superstition." After moving to New York in 1937, he became the Harlem editor. In 1939 he met and married Dhimah Rose Meadman, a white dancer, but they separated shortly thereafter. In 1941 he married Ellen Poplar, a white member on the Communist Party and they had two daughters.