Born and raised in Mississippi, novelist Richard Wright (1908-1960) wrote of the struggles of African-Americans in a racist America in the first half of the 20th Century. He encountered (and posed for) Carl van Vechten during an interlude of living in Harlem. Totally disenchanted with American racism, he moved permanently to Paris in 1946.
Van Vechten socialized and possibly more with African Americans when most white Americans did not and even our military was still segregated.
ReplyDeleteHe is now well recognized as an important factor in the Harlem Renaissance that brought African-American culture farther into the mainstream of American arts and letters than ever before.
Delete"disenchanted'... I would imagine at LEAST...
ReplyDelete"Disgusted" would probably have been a better choice of words.
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