August Wilson--born in 1945 Frederick August Kittel, Jr. in Pittsburgh--was the son of a German immigrant baker and an African-American cleaning woman.
Wilson's mother raised August and his siblings as a single parent until marrying in the 1950s when Wilson was a teenager.
The transition which included a move from a mostly black and Jewish neighborhood to a working class white neighborhood and school proved difficult for Wilson.
He eventually dropped out of high school but continued to educate himself reading the great African-American writers at the Carnegie Library.
Wilson joined the military serving for a year before he left. In 1965, he changed his name to honor his mother after his father's death.
In 1968, his first play was produced. He is best known for his Pulitzer-Prize winning plays Fences (1985) and The Piano Lesson (1990), which were both part of the ten-play cycle that secured his legacy as one of America's greatest playwrights.
August Wilson died in 2005 of liver cancer at the age of 60.
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Mixed Experience History Month is a yearly blog post series celebrating the history of the Mixed experience. Established in 2007, Mixed Experience History Month is an effort to show that we have long been a nation of multiracial and multicultural individuals of achievement (not tragic mulattoes). Please look for more profiles of people, places and events of the Mixed experience every weekday of May right here at Lightskinned-ed Girl, the blog! Thanks for reading.
