In 1932, he began attending meetings of the
John Reed Club. As the club was dominated by the
Communist Party, Wright established a relationship with several party members. Especially interested in the literary contacts made at the meetings, Wright formally joined the Communist Party in late 1933. As a revolutionary poet, he wrote numerous proletarian poems ("We of the Red Leaves of Red Books", for example), for
The New Masses and other
left-wing periodicals. A power struggle within the Chicago chapter of the John Reed Club had led to the dissolution of the club's leadership; Wright was told he had the support of the club's party members if he was willing to join the party.[13]
By 1935, Wright had completed his first novel,
Cesspool, published posthumously as
Lawd Today (1963). In January 1936 his story "Big Boy Leaves Home" was accepted for publication in
New Caravan. In February of that year, he began working with the
National Negro Congress. In April he chaired the
South Side Writers Group, whose members included
Arna Bontemps and
Margaret Walker. Wright submitted some of his critical essays and poetry to the group for criticism and read aloud some of his short stories. Through the club, he edited
Left Front, a magazine that the Communist Party shut down in 1937, despite Wright's repeated protests.[14] Throughout this period, Wright continued to contribute to
The New Masses magazine.
Pleased by his positive relations with white Communists in Chicago, Wright was later humiliated in New York City by some white party members who rescinded an offer to find housing for him when they learned his race.[15] Some black Communists denounced Wright as a "
bourgeois intellectual," but he was largely
autodidactic. He had been forced to end his public education after completing junior high school to support his mother and brother.[16]
Wright insisted that young communist writers be given space to cultivate their talents and he had a working relationship with a
black nationalist communist; these factors led to a public falling out with the party and leading members. Wright later described this episode through his fictional character Buddy Nealson,
an African-American communist in his book
Black Boy.[17] The relations with the party turned violent: Wright was threatened at knife point by
fellow-traveler co-workers, denounced as a
Trotskyite in the street by strikers, and physically assaulted by former comrades when he tried to join them during the 1936
May Day march.[18]
