August Wilson

August Wilson, born Frederick August Kittel Jr. on April 27, 1945, and died October 2, 2005, was an American playwright often called the "theater's poet of Black America." He is most famous for his ten-play series, The Pittsburgh Cycle (also known as The Century Cycle), which traces the African-American experience across the 20th century. Key plays in the series include *Fences* (1987) and *The Piano Lesson* (1990), both of which earned him the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, along with *Ma Rainey's Black Bottom* (1984) and *Joe Turner's Come and Gone* (1988). In 2006, he was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame. Wilson grew up in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, the fourth of six children. His father, Frederick August Kittel Sr., was a Sudeten German immigrant and baker; his mother, Daisy Wilson, was an African-American woman from North Carolina who worked as a housecleaner. His maternal grandmother reportedly walked from North Carolina to Pennsylvania seeking a better life. His mother raised him and his siblings alone until he was five in a cramped two-room apartment behind a grocery store, as his father was largely absent. He later adopted his mother’s surname. The Hill District was a poor, mostly Black neighborhood with Jewish and Italian immigrants. Being biracial, Wilson struggled to feel he belonged to either Black or White culture until later in life. After his mother divorced and remarried David Bedford in the 1950s, the family moved to a predominantly White working-class area called Hazelwood, where they faced racial hostility—bricks were thrown through their window—and were soon forced out. The Hill District later became the setting for many of his plays, and his upbringing with a strong matriarch influenced his writing. Raised Catholic, Wilson was one of 14 Black students at Central Catholic High School in 1959 but dropped out after a year. He then attended Connelley Vocational High School, found it unchallenging, and left Gladstone High School in the 10th grade in 1960 after a teacher accused him of plagiarizing a 20-page paper on Napoleon I. He hid this from his mother to avoid disappointing her. At 16, he started working menial jobs, meeting a range of people who later inspired characters like Sam in *The Janitor* (1985). He learned to read at age four and spent his teens educating himself at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, reading Black writers such as Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, and Arna Bontemps. The library later awarded him an honorary high school diploma. Wilson knew he wanted to be a writer, but his mother pushed him toward law. She forced him out of the house, and he enlisted in the U.S. Army for three years in 1962, though he was discharged after one year. He then worked odd jobs as a porter, short-order cook, gardener, and dishwasher. After his father’s death in 1965, he changed his name to August Wilson to honor his mother. That same year, he discovered the blues through Bessie Smith and bought a stolen typewriter for $10, which he often pawned. At 20, he decided he was a poet and submitted work to magazines like *Harper’s*. He wrote in bars, cigar stores, and cafes—on napkins and yellow notepads—absorbing the voices around him. He had a gift for dialect and an “astonishing memory,” and he learned not to censor the language he heard. Malcolm X’s voice influenced Wilson’s life and work, including his 1996 speech *The Ground on Which I Stand*. The Nation of Islam and the Black Power movement appealed to him for their ideas of self-sufficiency, self-defense, and self-determination, as well as Elijah Muhammad’s origin myths. In 1969, he married Brenda Burton, a Muslim, and became associated with the NOI (though he reportedly did not convert). They had a daughter, Sakina Ansari-Wilson, and divorced in 1972. In 1968, he co-founded the Black Horizon Theater in Pittsburgh’s Hill District with his friend Rob Penny. Wilson’s plays explore systemic and historical exploitation of African Americans, race relations, identity, migration, and racial discrimination. Actress Viola Davis said his writing “captures our humor, our vulnerabilities, our tragedies, our trauma. And he humanizes us. And he allows us to talk.” Since his death, three of his plays have been adapted into films: *Fences* (2016), *Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom* (2020), and *The Piano Lesson* (2024).