American playwright August Wilson was born on April 27, 1945 in the poor neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was raised in a small apartment with his mother and five siblings. His mother was an African American cleaning woman, and his father was a German immigrant (“August Wilson Biography”) who became a baker. His father left shortly after Wilson’s birth. His mother remarried, and the family moved to the predominantly white Hazelwood area. At his new high school, Wilson faced bigotry so extreme that he dropped out of school at 15 (“August Wilson - U.S. History in Context”). Wilson earned his high school diploma through an independent education at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh (“August Wilson Biography”). In 1965, Wilson moved
