Philosophical Literature

This chapter opens with a biographical consideration of Richard Wright that analyzes the economic penury and lack of dignity allotted to African-American sharecroppers as emphasized by the context of periodic and devastating floods along the Mississippi River. Wright’s early short story “Silt” and his parents’ struggles as sharecroppers are stressed. Wright’s formative writings dramatize “the struggle of blacks to accommodate themselves to constant injustice and humiliation while maintaining a modicum of personal dignity” (Richard Yarborough xxiv). These dramatizations recognize both a deontological and an expectational side to Kant’s dignitarian imperative: affirming not only the libertarian rights of individuals and collectives but also individual and collective duties toward the freedom and well-being of others. Analyzing “Big Boy Leaves Home” from Uncle Tom’s Children confirms this conclusion.