Julia Wright is the elder daughter of the late African American novelist, journalist and poet, Richard Wright. She is a descendant of the survivors of the 1919 Elaine Massacre through her lynched great uncle, Silas Hoskins. A Pan Africanist, she served under Kwame Nkrumah until the CIA-abetted coup d’etat in Ghana in 1966.

She subsequently worked with James Forman in SNCC [Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee] and went on to attend the first cultural Pan African Festival in Algiers alongside Kathleen and Eldridge Cleaver of the Black Panther Party. In Paris, France, she cofounded, in 1995, Wednesday rallies for political prisoners Mumia Abu-Jamal and Leonard Peltier that are still ongoing.