1908

Born 4 September in Roxie, Mississippi, a small town about ten miles east of Natchez. His father, Nathan Wright, is an illiterate sharecropper, and his mother, Ella Wilson Wright, is a schoolteacher.

1910

Brother Leon Alan born 24 September.

1911-2

Mother takes Wright and brother to Natchez to live with her family and the father later joins them and finds work in a sawmill.

1913-4

Family moves to Memphis, Tennessee. Father deserts them for another woman. Mother works as a cook to support the family.

1915-6

In September, Wright enters Howe Institute. Mother falls ill in early 1916 and the grandmother comes to care for the family. After she leaves, the mother puts Wright and his brother in an orphanage for a little more than a month. In the summer of 1916, they stay with maternal grandparents who now live in Jackson, Mississippi, and then they move in with Wright's Aunt Maggie and her husband Silas Hoskins in Elaine, Arkansas.

1917-8

Whites murder Hoskins, and the family flees to West Helena, Arkansas, and then to Jackson, Mississippi. After a few months, they return to West Helena, where Wright's mother and aunt cook and clean for whites. Soon, Aunt Maggie goes north to Detroit with her new lover.

1918-9

In the fall of 1918 Wright enters school, but has to leave in early 1919 because his mother's poor health forces him to earn money to support the family. The family moves often because they can't make rent, and Wright gathers coal along the railroad in order to heat the home. When his mother suffers a paralyzing stroke, the family goes with the grandmother back to Jackson. Aunt Maggie takes Leon Alan to Detroit with her.