SOURCE: Dick, Bruce. “Richard Wright and the Blues Connection.” Mississippi Quarterly 42, no. 4 (fall 1989): 393-408.

In the following essay, Dick discusses Wright's blues songs and critical work, contending that he “easily stands as one of the forerunners of interpretive blues criticism.”

Of the major twentieth-century African-American writers, Zora Neale Hurston and Ralph Ellison are famous for celebrating their forebears' folk roots. Hurston secured a permanent place among eminent American folklorists after the release of Mules and Men (1935), her monumental study of black American folk beliefs. Ellison also joined the first rank of American writers with the publication of Invisible Man (1952), which traced a young black man's coming to terms with his folk past. Although critics rarely say so, the same folk interests that kindled the writings of Hurston and Ellison also inspired the works of Richard Wright, their contemporary.

Wright recognized the important value of African-American folk culture, particularly...