Understanding the Civil Right's Movement Through Richard Wright's "Down by the Riverside"
I believe Richard Wright’s “Down by the Riverside” vehemently supports the change brought by the civil rights movement, but asserts that there is still a lot that needs to be done, specifically in terms of economic and resource equality. The whole short story focuses on depicting the most vivid, gruesome, but very possible life of a Black man living in Jim Crow South during the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. The story doesn’t hold back on providing the reader with the pure terror and hopelessness filling the everyday life of a Black person in America. The main character, Mann, is forced to make difficult decisions to fulfill his family’s rights to basic human necessities. A really good way Wright brings about this urgency for change in the Jim Crow South is Mann’s naivety about the true extent of the pure evil of racist white people. He shows that any optimism or desire to believe things are any better than they are is just enabling the constant cycle of oppression...