Nearly 80 years ago, Richard Wright became one of the most famous Black writers in the United States with the publication of “Native Son,” a novel whose searing critique of systemic racism made it a best-seller and inspired a generation of Black writers. In 1941, Wright wrote a new novel titled “The Man Who Lived Underground,” but publishers refused to release it, in part because the book was filled with graphic descriptions of police brutality by white officers against a Black man. His manuscript was largely forgotten until his daughter Julia Wright unearthed it at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University. “The Man Who Lived Underground” was not published in the 1940s because white publishers did not want to highlight “white supremacist police violence upon a Black man because it was too close to home,” says Julia Wright. “It’s a bit like lifting the stone and not wanting the worms, the racist worms underneath, to be seen.”
This week, four parents from Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico were reunited with their children in the United States after being separated under former President Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy. They were the first families to be reunited on U.S. soil since the Biden administration began its reunification process. “Although we love to see the reunifications and they’re very moving, we have to keep in mind what led to that and that it should never have happened in the first place,” says Carol Anne Donohoe, managing attorney for the Family Reunification Project at Al Otro Lado. We also speak with Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, who leads the ACLU’s lawsuit over family separations. He notes more than 1,000 children are still separated from their parents, and adds, “We have not even found the parents of 455 children.”
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Democracy Now! 2021-05-07 Friday
- Headlines for May 07, 2021
- "They Were Tortured": 4 Families Torn Apart by Trump Are Reunited. 1,000+ Still Separated, Missing.
- Richard Wright's Novel About Racist Police Violence Was Rejected in 1941; It Has Just Been Published