Roxie News

A 39-year-old Mangham, Louisiana man sustained fatal injuries in a two-vehicle crash on U.S. Highway 425 in Morehouse Parish. via WMC-FM

“When you read Wright, you got the sense that he was very conscious of who he was and what it meant to be black in the early part of the 20th century”

SOME SIX WEEKS before Richard Wright died of a heart attack in 1960, the novelist, memoirist, social critic and curator of the black experience departed somewhat from his literary tradition. via Inside Bay Area

“It's like he's saying, `I am trying this and asking questions and letting you [the reader] find the answers.”

In his tiny studio overlooking the Left Bank of Paris, Wright began a crime novel -- a genre far removed from his social tours de force Native Son and Black Boy -- that would become one of the great mysteries ... via The Miami Herald

“The white folks ain never gimme a chance! They ain never give no black man a chance! There ain nothing in you whole life yuh kin keep from em! They take yo lan! They take yo women! N then they take yo life!”

Richard Wright writes of the Mississippi that no one wants to speak of even today. To read what Wright wrote is to recall a shameful period in our history as witnessed through the eyes of a survivor.

The Mississippi Reads selection for 2008 is Richard Wright's 'Uncle Tom's Children.' Mississippi Reads is a statewide initiative to encourage all Mississippians to read and discuss a work of fiction written by a Mississippian. The 2009 choice is Eudora Welty's 'Collected Stories.'

Five novellas and an essay, 'The Ethics of Living Jim Crow,' make up 'Uncle Tom's Children.' Published in 1938, it was Wright's first book and received almost universal praise. First lady Eleanor Roosevelt commented in her New York World-Telegram column that it was 'beautifully written and so vivid that I had a most unhappy time reading it.' Read more

“If somebody did tell him that, it was someone who didn't know what he was talking about.”

U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn says there's a reason why he's standing in the way of legislation that would fund the FBI's pursuit of unpunished killers from the civil rights era. via The Clarion-Ledger

“The black squirrel is the reason we drove up here”

Pat Tomlinson had no problem finding squirrels at the Twin Oaks Wildlife Management Area Saturday morning, opening day of the Zone 2 season. via The Clarion-Ledger