Author Archives: deidredeanne

An immersive exhibition in Pittsburgh explores the award-winning dramatist’s life and legacy Throughout the 1960s and ‘70s, playwright August Wilson spent much of his time in diners and coffee shops in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, scrawling notes on napkins about the sights, sounds and working-class people of the historically Black neighborhood.Pittsburgh was Wilson’s muse for hisContinue reading “How Playwright August Wilson Captured the Highs and Lows of Black America”

On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass gave a keynote address at an Independence Day celebration and asked, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” Douglass was a powerful orator, often traveling six months out of the year to give lectures on abolition. His speech, given at an event commemorating the signing of the DeclarationContinue reading “A Nation’s Story: “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?””