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'Lynching rope' replaced with police bullets, playwright Wilson says
Tuesday, March 21, 2000 By Bob Hoover, Post-Gazette Book Editor
Starting with "Jitney" in the 1970s and continuing with "King Hedley II," which premiered at the Pittsburgh Public Theater last year, August Wilson has delivered a consistent message -- racism is a destructive, often fatal American disease.
For an archive of PG Online articles and reviews related to August Wilson, please visit An August heritage.
He delivered that message again last night at the Heinz Lecture series at Carnegie Music Hall, but without the humor and charm that characterize his plays.
Wearing his usual dark suit, the grim-faced playwright demanded attention immediately by slapping the podium with his open hand perhaps 20 times. Some of the audience picked up on the rhythm, clapping along; others seemed apprehensive.
"The old world's in a hell of a fix when an unarmed man is shot 41 times for looking up and down the street," said Wilson, referring to the killing of Amadou Diallo in New York.
The reference set the tone for his nearly 90-minute angry assault on racism and the current plight of his fellow black Americans still suffering what he calls the "unabated, continuous attitudes of slavery."
As his plays show, Wilson is a serious student of American history and much of his talk was a chronicle of the country dating from the time when the first African slave set his "square-toed foot on these shores."
Although slavery is an age-old practice, Wilson said the American version was unique because it was based solely on race. Previously, it had been a "condition" of conquest. A slave always retained a right to be free under that condition, he said.
African slaves in America, however, were even denied their "moral personality," he said.
Wilson's history lesson continued to the present, including the Diallo shooting and other examples of police shootings of blacks around the country.
"We've replaced the [lynching] rope with bullets," he said, fired by "rogue cops who act with impunity. We are tired of bleeding."
He also indicted the federal government for failing to enforce civil rights laws and continuing to discriminate against blacks. The government, he charged, practices the "policies of exclusion and containment" and these policies deny black Americans access to a decent life.
Blacks are still treated as "marginal human beings," he charged, little differently from when they were considered property under slavery.
"But, we are not servants at the party" any longer, he said, citing the many contributions blacks have made to America's material and spiritual wealth. "These are contributions weighted with the blood and bone of our ancestors."
Wilson's attack on American racism was only a part of his argument.
He also issued a heartfelt plea for all Americans "to find the courage to solve this problem as not to burden our children and grandchildren. We are both victims of our history, but I will not accept the failure" of America's ideals.
"We have the means. All we need now is the will," he said.
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