Richard had many reasons on why he wanted to move to Chicago. However, he also had motives that caused him to move. All the experiences he went through caused him to leave the South. Once he was in the big city, a variety of things happened to him which made a big effect on his lifestyle.
Being a young black but living in the South, Richard was faced with the many obstacles of segregation and mistreatment of the black people. Most likely the main reason for Richard wanting to move to Chicago is the problems he is having fitting into the white population. At an early age, he hears rumors about a white man beating a black boy and that fills his mind with questions about relations between white and black people. At this point, Richard is still to young and ignorant to understand what is going and nobody in his house will talk to him about racism and their feelings about it.
When Richard becomes a little older, he takes a few jobs that really opened his eyes towards seeing how blacks are treated. His second job, working for his illiterate neighbor, lets him experience the isolation of Southern black sharecroppers. After seeing them, Richard feels like a civilized man from a big city. However, the next job he takes, in an optical lens-making store, makes him feel the opposite way as the pervious. Pease and Reynolds, his white coworkers, make Richards time at the shop a nightmare. Trying to make him feel useless and plotting tricks against him, Pease and Reynolds drive Richard out of the store, making him quit. With this job, Richard experiences total demoralization and feels very violated by the white people that he becomes ashamed.
Richard drifts from job to job and ends up at a hotel where he witnesses a white security guard fondling a black maid. As he steps forward to help her out, the guard threatens him with a gun. After this happened, Richard realizes that racism encourages theft, so that the black people can get back at the whites for taking advantage of the black maid.