Richard Robert Wright, Sr. was an American military officer, educator, politician, civil rights advocate and banking entrepreneur.
Background
Richard R. Wright, Sr. was born on May 16, 1855, into slavery, in a log cabin six miles from Dalton, Georgia, the only child of Robert and Harriet Waddell. His mother was a house servant; his father, of partial Cherokee descent, was the family coachman. When Wright, Sr. was two years old, his father fled to freedom, and he and his mother were moved to Cuthbert, Georgia. There his mother married Alexander Wright and had two more children. Alexander Wright escaped during the Civil War to join the Union army. After emancipation, Harriet Wright, hearing of a "Yankee school" for Negroes in Atlanta, took her children there and opened a boardinghouse.
Education
Richard, undersized but bright, attended Storr's School, operated by the American Missionary Association. In 1869 Wright was chosen as a preparatory student at the recently established Atlanta University, a pioneering institution of higher learning for Negroes. To help finance his education, he taught school during the summers. He graduated as valedictorian of the university's first class in 1876.
Career
Wright's first job after graduation was as principal of an elementary school in Cuthbert, Georgia, his childhood home. Working with the local black community, he organized cooperatives through which the farmers could market their own produce and conducted Georgia's first Negro county fair. In 1878 he called a convention of Negro teachers and organized the Georgia State Teachers' Association, serving as its first president. At the same time he began publishing the Weekly Journal of Progress, originally the organ of the teachers' association, but later, renamed the Weekly Sentinel, a newspaper of modest circulation. On the strength of his growing reputation as an organizer, he was invited to Augusta in 1880 to establish and head Ware High School, the state's first public high school for Negroes. Wright, Sr. was an ambitious young man, concerned with making his way as a black within the post-Reconstruction social order in Georgia; he had acquired considerable influence with his extension work, teachers' organization, and newspaper. Both his ambition and his wideranging contacts led him logically to politics, which for a black in Georgia meant the Republican party. Traditionally a minority party in the South with a black base and a white leadership, the GOP in Georgia was split in 1880 by the insurgency of able young black men looking for rewards commensurate with the voting power of their race. Wright, Sr. aided in this temporarily successful revolt and was sent as an alternate delegate to the Republican National Convention of that year. Continuing as a member of the state Central Committee even after white leadership was resumed in 1882, Wright, Sr. was active in party affairs for the rest of the century and was chosen as a delegate to the national conventions through 1896. In return for his influence with black voters he received patronage positions. Some he accepted, such as the office of special paymaster in the army during the Spanish-American War, from which he received the rank of major; others, such as that of United States deputy marshal for Southern Georgia, he declined. His appointment to the presidency of the newly organized, federally supported State Industrial College in Savannah was probably not unrelated to his political activities. Some of his more significant rewards came under McKinley, shortly before Wright, Sr. left politics. In addition to the paymaster's job, he had accepted a postmastership for his daughter but declined a census supervisor's position for himself after white protest. Acting as a liaison for McKinley with blacks who were piqued at being snubbed, in 1898 Wright, Sr. gave a dinner for the president at the Georgia State Industrial College to help heal the breach that was growing between blacks and the Republican organization. But soon he himself was among those who felt rejected. Caught in a feud with members of the state organization, both black and white, experiencing the growing disfranchisement restrictions placed on blacks in Georgia politics, Wright, Sr. abandoned politics, though he remained a Republican throughout the rest of his life. The Second Morrill Act of 1890 provided federal money for black as well as white state colleges. In response to the act, the State Industrial College for Negroes was established in Savannah in 1891 with Wright, Sr. as its first president. He was a logical choice, having spent fifteen years as a teacher and administrator. As an advocate of black self-help he believed in the need for agricultural and industrial as well as academic training, and his work in politics had demonstrated his ability and willingness to work with white leaders. He led the school for thirty years until he retired in 1921, building its campus and setting its educational philosophy. The role of black colleges in the South was not an easy one. Responsible to white trustees who often were not eager to advance black education, dedicated to educating students who entered with poor training because of the inadequate educational systems of the South, these institutions faced a difficult task in establishing and maintaining adequate college standards. Georgia State Industrial College found itself in this predicament. Never ranked among the best Negro colleges, the institution came under fire from the Phelps-Stokes Report in 1916 and a federal government survey in 1921 as being inadequate in its plant and curriculum. During his years as president Wright, Sr. was also active in commercial activities, especially in real estate dealings in and around Savannah. His college paper stressed the values of business and thrift. Thus there was a continuity in his entrepreneurial activity when he retired from the college at the age of sixty-seven in 1921 and moved to Philadelphia to establish a bank. Wright, Sr. determined to enter banking despite his lack of previous experience. Initially accumulating the requisite capital mainly from his family, Wright, Sr. opened the Citizens and Southern Banking Company as a private venture in 1921. Despite the failure of a larger black-owned bank in Philadelphia, he applied for a state charter in 1926 as the Citizens and Southern Bank and Trust Company. His success was noteworthy. Wright's own cautious, prudent nature, which had seen him through the vicissitudes of black life in Georgia, coupled with his financial acumen, caused him to eschew speculative banking and to concentrate instead on security and liquidity in preference to a higher rate of earnings. The bank's funds were invested in short-term loans, conservative bonds, and other such securities. At the time of his death the Citizens and Southern Bank and Trust Company had over $3 million in deposits. He died on July 2, 1947, in Philadelphia, of circulatory failure and was buried in Mount Lawn Cemetery in Sharon Hill, Pennsylvania.
Achievements
Religion
Richard R. Wright, Sr. was a long-time member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Views
Wright, Sr. believed that if blacks proved themselves to whites educationally and economically, political and social rights were bound to follow.
Membership
Richard Robert Wright, Sr. was a member of the National Freedom Day Association, the Georgia State Teachers' Association, the State Industrial College for Negroes and other organisations.
Personality
Richard Wright, Sr. remained sprightly and vigorous throughout his long life.
Connections
On June 7, 1876, Richard R. Wright, Sr. married Lydia Elizabeth Howard of Columbus, Georgia. They had nine children.