A Call For Real Choices: Richard Wright's “Down by the Riverside”
The image above depicts the result of Mann’s choice to have one final act of defiance. This choice resulted in his limp hand trailing in the Mississippi River. Richard Wright's short story “Down by the Riverside” highlights the need for social change by exposing how white supremacy dehumanizes Black people and creates artificial scarcity along desperation, which ultimately work to harm both Black and White communities. Many of the themes he introduces relate to the Civil Rights Movement, which was a mass protest against racial segregation and discrimination in the Jim Crow South. Wright uses naturalism to represent the oppressive power of institutionalized racism through an unrelenting mass flood of the Mississippi River. Racism just as much as the flood forced Mann to make hopeless choices that continued to spiral out of control, each further compromising his sense of morality and therefore his sense of self. First, he had to choose between accepting a stolen boat or letti...