At a time when Jim Crow laws made racial segregation legal across much of the United States, author Richard Wright gave voice to a struggle – as the first African American author to achieve widespread critical and commercial success.

Novels like Passing by Nella Larsen, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, and the poetry of Langston Hughes were all written during this period and have become important pieces of the American literary canon. Still, when...