Down By the Riverside and the Civil Rights Movement

On the surface, Richard Wright's short story "Down By the Riverside" tells the story of a man relentlessly beat down by the systems of oppression in America's Jim Crow south, but under that harrowing exterior lies a plea for de-segregation and racial equality. The story's main character, Mann, is usually pushed through the plot not by his own will, but by naturalist forces which do not answer to him. However, there are sometimes brief moments of levity when characters' race almost seems to be forgotten for a short while as they try to survive the flooding.

At one point in the story, Mann rows his family in a stolen boat towards a pair of distant, faint lights in hopes of finding aid or shelter from the storm. After rowing for hours, the thought of finding other people fills Mann with strength, "They helped him, those lights. For awhile he rowed without effort. Where there were lights there were people, and where there were people there was help … he rowed on and they glowed again, their soft sheen helping him to seep the oars." The source of the lights is soon revealed to be the home of the white owners of Mann's stolen boat, and the interaction between the two parties immediately turns hostile. Stripped of the context of race and time, this moment should have served as a point of relief for the hero, where he and his companions may take refuge from the naturalist force of the flood, but Wright shows that racism taints people and turns them into another naturalist antagonist. The white family's son says, "That's our boat Father! Its white!" And now the boat, which had previously been a symbol of hope for Mann and his family like the lights, has come to represent a seemingly insurmountable barrier which separates the color of their skin and the color of the boat.

Some time later, Mann and his new young companion, Brinkley, are tasked with evacuating a Red Cross hospital to higher ground. Because of the flooding, the evacuees are unable to leave through the front entrance. The group decides to cut through the ceiling, and the Colonel, perhaps recalling Mann's feats of rowing strength, hands him the axe. Because of his humanity, Mann is absorbed into this new directive, "He forgot everything but that he must cut a hole through this ceiling to save people." The Colonel also seems to lose himself in the situation, taking an order from Mann to keep the light steady on the roof. In a life-threatening event, the group forgets social constructs and customs, and focuses on their survival through any means necessary.

In "Down By the Riverside," Wright puts his characters through unimaginable treachery and hardship where the forces of nature and Jim Crow threaten to literally and figuratively drown them. However, Wright also shows that whenever the forces of nature become too powerful, the collective is able to rise up, put aside their make-believe differences, and triumph. It is through these scenes that Wright displays the pointlessness of Jim Crow in the face of nature.