Stamp to honor playwright August Wilson
The U.S. Postal Service will release a stamp featuring playwright, poet and Pittsburgh native August Wilson, the agency announced Tuesday.
The forever stamp will be part of the USPS’s Black Heritage series, honoring people whose work contributed to arts and culture in the Black community. Mr. Wilson’s stamp will be the 44th in the series.
The stamp will be dedicated on Jan. 28 during a ceremony that will be streamed on Facebook and Twitter.
“One of America’s greatest playwrights, Wilson is hailed as a trailblazer for helping to bring nonmusical African American drama to the forefront of American theater,” according to a statement from the USPS.
Mr. Wilson was was born Frederick August Kittel in 1945 in the Hill District, the fourth of six children. During his life, he experienced and observed racial injustice, the civil rights movement and the Black Power movement. He also witnessed the destruction of the Lower Hill and the uprooting of more than 10,000 people to build the Civic Arena, now demolished.
As an artist, his work chronicled the experience of living as an African-American. Among the many awards won by Mr. Wilson were two Pulitzer Prizes, for “Fences” and “The Piano Lesson.” All but one of the 10 plays in his American Century Cycle are set in Pittsburgh. He died in 2005.
The Black Heritage series dates to 1978 when Harriet Tubman was featured. That was followed the next year by Martin Luther King Jr. Other figures include Jackie Robinson, who was featured in 1982, Malcolm X in 1999, Thurgood Marshall in 2003 and Ella Fitzgerald in 2007.