What august was his goal as a playwright. Im going to some stuff that you have heard before from our inclass presentation from, sam hall, but theres going to be some stuff that im going to talk about in a little bit more depth than we talked about last class on thursday, guys are going to look at tbone and weasel. I really hope you all read that and prepare to do that. Im going to give you your very quick pop quiz, the pop quiz for fences. Be easy as we will be done discussing, but were going to take it so you guys can get a grade for it. And you will also have the quiz for tbone and weasel. Lets start with August Wilson. August wilson was born Frederick August cattell or kittel in april 22. On april 27th of 1945, his mothers was daisy wilson. She a cleaning lady. Cleaning lady . His fathers name was Frederick August kittel. He was a german baker. I want you guys to pay attention. Racing in a very specific way. Races always. One of the things that were discussing as, we look at these plays. So his father, frederick kittel, was a german baker. So hes white or hes european. And then his mother, a black woman named daisy. Right. And shes a cleaning lady. I want to understand, were were already talking about a mixed relationship when so his mixed identity is a part of what hes working on when hes writing like how he is negotiating African American existence is, a part of who and what he is as working as an artist and writer. Its part of the mission that hes undertaking. He is the fourth of six children, so and they live in the hill district of pencil. Pittsburgh, pennsylvania. A lot of what wilson is going to talk about deals with the great migration. Ive mentioned that in this class before. The great migration is what happened after reconstruction in the south, when the social status of black people moved from slavery to freed to the reconstruction era to sharecropping. So was this new kind of or name for. I dont think its quite accurate for me to say slavery. Essentially, thats what it becomes. Weve talked in this room about what sharecropping is right. Good. Thank you. And its its just a system where the black people who used to be the slaves on the on the plantation are now in a position where they are they are renting what used to be the slave cabins. They are renting the they are renting the tools to go work or the same arms on they were enslaved and enter the system in which theyre never able to actually pay for pay for the rental fees, for the things that now using to till the land. So thats why the great thats one of the motivating factors that caused number of blacks to move north northward at the turn of the and pursue a better life in the. I want you guys to think for just a couple of minutes about what that does or what that means for black families in the south. Was it whole families moving north or was it more often not the man who would go north or the eldest son who would go from the southern to the northern states and their was to make money that they could send home. Thats always the goal. Youll find number of people in pittsburgh, in new york and in chicago who have come north looking make a fortune so that they can either make enough money so that their families can come up to the north and live with them in the north or so they send money home so that the people that they that that are their people down there could have a way of living. So understand that one of the things that wilson is talking about, one of the things that informs what wilson is talking about is the great migration migration in pittsburgh. These rural areas are now dealing with an influx of black people. There are racial tensions that start to get at at the turn of the and afterwards the racial tensions in were white neighborhoods in which black presence is hadnt been before, in which now you have a a growing poor black population who need things to live. They need jobs, they need food, they shelter because its cold. Its colder in pittsburgh than was in South Carolina or in georgia. And the black people who have now migrated north are they get to a point where theyre like, how do we live . Where do we where do we how do we feed ourselves . How do we clothe ourselves . These become the primary concerns, understand that all those things are water informing fences. When we finally get to it. So, so at the age of 15, in 60, he drops out of high school and he joins the army. In 1962 for three years. And want to take just a second to talk about what that means. Why why today do we have black black people, i cant give you the percentages. I would be making stuff up and lying to you, but i believe theres a higher percentage of black people in our current military than, other races. What are some of the motivating, motivating factors for the military . What does it give you hes unmarried at this point ahead . Yeah, we dont a lot of like recruits go to like poor black neighborhoods, poor neighborhoods, people of color to go recruit in black around kids. So and like kind of like push the education like getting paid and using that as like a force to kind of bring more because like they wouldnt get it to like rich white kids. So its right. So i just want you to understand that somehow point was or what a question to do with was. She believes that recruiting agencies go to poor black neighborhoods and recruit black people in greater numbers than they do in rich white neighborhoods. Thats that is a fact of today may have been a fact in the 1960s but its a its a job its a good job it provides money it provides an income. It provides a steady income. Right. And youre risking your life. Yes, but thats part of this. Thats of this. I think about the institutions that take black men away from their families outside of prison and what will become the incarceration the insane incarcerate incarceration based around things that happened in the eighties but we to go back and look at the systems that moved black men away from families. The army was one of them or the Armed Services were one of them, but it wasnt it wasnt in a cruel way i think they were offered this. They said, hey, heres an opportunity for you to get three meals a day place to sleep, training, educate, fashion. And we and you know, you can send a check home to your family. So that is one of the opportune cities for employment and advancement that happened during when wilson was at point. He would have been about 18 years old. But hes in the for three years after he leaves the armys in the late 1960s he comes back to the pittsburgh area and he a group of artists and they the center avenue poets which will later become later he will cofound the black horizon theater, which is a black National Theater company. Pittsburgh, pennsylvania, in 19 some so and he stays in pittsburgh until, i think 74 and 1975. And then begins to move westward. He spends a couple of years in chicago and then he moves in 1978 to minnesota and he joins and hes going to concentrate on playwriting in minnesota and he joins penumbra theater and the artistic director for the penumbra theater is lou bellamy. The penumbra theater is, a black owned black, oriented and black centered Theater Company in minnesota minnesota. Why is that of the name of a town in minnesota flying out of my head right now . I used to work brains trying to say fargo, minnesota but its not fargo, minneapolis, that would be the name of a giant town in minnesota that i cant think of right now. So penumbra theater is in minneapolis minnesota and hes working with lou bellamy. Understand that August Wilson gets a point in his life where what hes writing about is the lives of black people. And i want to i want guys to think for just a couple of minutes about why happening. Why is it significant and in what way is it significant that is writing about the lives of black people. Weve talked in this class before about the shift between white writing, black voices. What does it mean when a write a white playwright writes a character, writes a black character into a play . What is is what does their voice sound like . Is it authentic . What is it what is the characters purpose . Black characters who are appearing in white movies become a thing. Im to jump just a little bit to talk about the popular thats influencing the way August Wilson is thinking about plays and writing and the presentation of black people. But im only going to jump for just a couple of seconds. I want to talk for second about the popular of the 1980s. So in the 1980s, what are the things that are informing and im talking about the 1980s because August Wilson will ultimately talk about were going to talk about fences. But lets talk about the things that were informing the way wilson was thinking about the world. So in the mid to in beginning to the like like 1980 19 1986, 1987. What the popular images that are influencing what wilson is seeing youve got the movies e. T. Return of the jedi raiders of the lost ark, Beverly Hills cop Breakfast Club pretty in pink and some kind of wonderful. I know that most of these movies came out before you all were born. Are you at all familiar with these series of movies have you heard of them before . If you think about things like Breakfast Club, if you think about things like pretty in pink, i think his name is john hughes, if im not mistaken, john hughes is making a whole genre. And its we talked about what ideology means in room before ideology are those unspoken and less clear structures that influence the way people about america the way women should behave, the way should behave, what it means to be straight, what it means to be gay, what it to be. A whole lot of things. No one says it outright, but its always its unspoken. Underlying structures that inform the way we think about and identity and class and gender. That makes sense. Good. So if youve got movies like pretty in pink and some kind of wonderful and i think theres a movie with john cusack holding up a boombox that i cant high fidelity i dont think its high fidelity i cant remember what it is but you have all of these as the big east movies that are coming out in the eighties and the primary concern of this these movies for for a lot of i think this is technically the beginnings of rom com im not a cinema im not a simple professor i cant tell you truth of that. But white women, white men falling love those are what a lot of those stories are about. Overcoming rejection, overcoming obstacles, overcoming blah, blah. So most of our movies, the eighties, are dealing white folks falling in love. I think for just a couple seconds, about how we people of color African American people appear in those give it just a little bit of consideration. We are more often not marginal or tend general. We are someone in that story. Right. So when we make it to August Wilson, we have an instance of so the things that are motivating are his desire to move people from the margins to the center and say, whats true about us, what matters to us . Whats happening in our lives . Because when were just on the margins what we have to say is maybe not its not part of the main story. And so it becomes this caricature here where were saying the funny lines. Like i said, weve got prior to this. Weve got George Jefferson who appear, who began as a marginal character in the its not called the archie bunker show, but it was archie bunker. And then weve got good times, black people showing up in comedy black peoples lives, in Popular Culture for a very long time was something that you laughed at, not laughed with, but laughed at. Right. We were the joke we were the comedy. I think about eddie murphy whos trying his i dont know if any of you have ever looked at or read his early comedy, but think about what thats rooted on. And its different black people black comedians, black people creating black comedy for black people is a different experience than black people appearing in largely white structures. And being something to be laughed at. So i want you guys to consider how that works on television weve got roseanne married with vcrs become a thing in the 1980s mtv believe it or not at one point in time Music Television began with music like thats video killed the radio star think it was 1986 or somewhere around there i was a High School Student and we all know you are looking at me with expressions like for real, the very first song that ever played on mtv. And i dont know it because of a trivial pursuit card was video killed. The radio star . I cant tell you who did that song, but i know that that was the song. And Michael Jacksons thriller think about Michael Jackson in the 1980s. This is how black people are represented in art becomes becomes a thought people are taking are doing on purpose people are people are really considering what happened. Black artists, black black song black black performers are im not saying that they are embracing black identity, but theyre becoming critical and critically analyzing black identity in a way is a response to the blaxploitation films the 1970s in response to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. We always have to look things in relationship to each other. We forget the 1960s and what happened during Civil Rights Movement. We go back further and at the 1950s and we again look at emmett tills mother who realized value of performance by keeping emmett tills casket open. That was an act performance. She was like, you wont this wont happen behind closed doors any more. Think about private versus public voice. What does it mean when we are forced to something in private as opposed to what happens when we make it public . Think about the developments in technology that have happened between the 1950s and the 1980s, think about the advancements we make in telephone. Think about the advancements we get in recording, recording technologies. Think about the advancements weve made in film and television itself, for example, in the way that should sense to you guys. Now, there are videos every time something out there if somebody meets you in in the grocery parking lot and they start acting funny you first thing whats the first thing that happens what is the first thing that happens if you in a public space and something and you think things are going to go bad thats not a rhetorical question you can leave. Yes the first one somebody pulls out a phone and recording. We have all of these instances right now of things used to happen and without any evidence. But now theres evidence right. Theres evidence not only from local cameras, but every individual everybody in this room has their own phone. So they have a way of document eating their existence and that these crazy things happen to us. Right. Because thats thats what it African American existence becomes for a while. We to the public. You were treating us in this way. And oftentimes what comes back is people go, what . It cant be that you are exaggerating well now. Now we get to the point where our phone comes out. Were like, were not exaggerating this is whats happening. And so then what happens subsequently is this weird justification . Oh, i have understand the context for that, right . That was taken out of context, but maybe it wasnt taken out of context. So when we get back to August Wilson in the 1980s, the things that are informed, his artistic vision and, his life as a writer include all of those pop culture reference that i talk to you. And so hes seeing a large whats whats informing his television and his movie habits. Hes like, thats thats white peoples world whos writing about us. And when they write about us, what are they saying . Thats driving him as as a playwright . Good. So lets talk about really briefly, im going to go through the contextualization of the 1980s. A lot of this is stuff that i was alive for. And we have different relationship to this. Like i realized as i was putting this up here this morning that you guys are going to look at a lot of the stuff that im about to say as stuff that only ever existed in a history book but i in high school from essentially here on right so everything that im talking about are things that i have a memory of having happened while i was in high school so i was a little bit younger than where you guys are right . So in 1980, mount st helens explodes. I cant begin to tell you what the images of ash pouring all over all over those people looked like and it was on my television for days. Images of people covered in ash we all saw. Its what informed us on october 10th, 1988, president jimmy carter signed legislation establishing the boston African AmericanNational Historic site. Its the oldest black church, america, and thats what happened in 1980s. It was on the, ah, january 20th, 1981. Its inauguration of Ronald Reagan, who is the 40th president of the united states. This matters you know, im not an economics, but reaganomics is something that you can look up and look how it affected the world. One of the things that is the most important part about that that well talk about later deals with the tax cut in which we went from, i think 70 tax rate on. Theres a way to say that i dont know what it is, but theres a 70 tax rate, tax rate gets dropped to like 37 or 35 from the wealthiest in the country over the course of five years. We lose as a country, 750,000,000 billion sorry, not million billion over five years. We as a country lose 750 billion in tax revenue based on something. But based on this bill that was signed by Ronald Reagan march 30th, 1981, someone tried to kill Ronald Reagan, everybody about it. Im only talking about the things that showed on the news four days, april 12th, 1981 is the launch of, the first launch from the Space Shuttle in cape canaveral, january 29th. Reagans tax cuts cost seven cost to america, 750 billion over the next five years. September 12th, 1981. Sandra. Sandra day oconnor becomes the first female justice of the supreme court. These are big that we couldnt not see. So im absolutely positive