In the early years of the twenty-first century, a discussion of the American protest novel or of Richard Wright as a protest novelist is an exercise in retrospection. It seems from certain angles of critical thought that literary history demands a deliberate, not always happy, effort to remember things past. The glance back privileges the claims of history over the speculations of aesthetics. It is especially necessary to let history speak in the case of Wright and the African American novel. Our postmodern sense of aesthetics can betray us and muddle our understanding of the necessity for protesting social policies and cultural beliefs through the mechanism of the novel. Looking backward helps us to remember at least two points. The African American novel originated in the nineteenth century as the use of literacy and writing more for purposes of enlightenment than for the pleasures of entertainment. Richard Wright stands in a special relationship to the form he sought to develop, because he did not abandon the original purposes of the black novel for the sake of being modern.