Most scholarship on Richard Wright places him as one of the key representatives of atheism and secularism in the history of 20th century African American letters. This representation consequently reduces and overlooks much of the nuances Wright’s thoughts on religion. This chapter highlights that Wright recognized two contrasting thoughts that serve as the foundation of his thinking about religion: the significance of religion for poor Black adherents and the insufficiency of any religion for Black devotees in the context of a white supremacist world. Since this complication reappears throughout his oeuvre, this chapter seeks to provide a general portrait of Wright’s overlooked thoughts on religion—while also limiting my judgments of those thoughts—in order to contextualize how his work fits in mid-twentieth-century Black religious discourse.

Black male spectators in Wright's fiction were drawn to the fascination of watching white characters on the screen in the Jim Crow Era.   They were nonetheless aware that their desires for the seductive women on the screen or in the posters were taboo during this time, creating a sense of alienation and only forced ability to identify with white protagonists. This article analyzes the responses of Jake in Lawd Today! and of Bigger in Native Son as they succumb to the temptations of the glittery world of movies on the screen and in movie posters. The article then turns to Wright's exploration of later characters in "The Man Who Lived Underground" and Cross Damom in The Outsiders,who can be considered cinematic seers. The characters place themselves as protagonists in film plots and create their own sense of power over how cinema portrayed Black males. Wright wanted to find ways for more Black impact on both cinema and other forms of media culture This trajectory is traced in the article.