August Wilson, African American Playwright

In 1984, August Wilson's play, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom was voted Best Play of the Year by the New York Drama Critics' Circle. The success of Ma Rainey's Black Bottom boosted August Wilson in the direction that he was destined to go; a path that would lead him to become known as the most highly regarded black dramatist of the twentieth century.

August Wilson was born Frederick August Kittel on April 27th, 1945 in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania to a black father and a white mother. Frederick Kittle, his father, seldom spent time with the family, which consisted of five other children beside himself. Daisy Wilson, his mother, was forced to support her family by working as a cleaning lady.

As a teenager, August was faced with a great deal of racial hostility, usually of the violent type when the family moved to a predominantly white suburban neighborhood. In school, there was so much bias against him from both students and teachers that he was forced to drop out at age fifteen. However, August would not be stopped in his education, so he proceeded to study his own way at the Carnegie Library. He focused mainly on black works by Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps as well as other black writers. He started writing on his own in 1965, when he purchased his first typewriter. During the next years, he supported himself by working through menial jobs. He was greatly influenced and motivated for his work by the famous black blues singer, Bessie Smith.

Wilson wanted to show the effect of racism on African Americans and with Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, he took a peculiar stand. The play is set in Chicago in the 1920's and deals mainly with a black blues singer's exploitation of her fellow musicians and her exploitation by white record companies. Not only is Wilson pointing out the negative way that black musicians were treated by their white employers, but he also shows Ma Rainey, an arrogant, blustery woman used to getting her own way, bullying her band into doing everything she wishes for them to do. Even if it involves stopping rehearsal to get her a Coke from down the street. She verbally abuses everyone around her during the course of the play, justifying it with the fact that she is an important musical figure. But certain lines in the play point out that, while she is out of her southern tour, she is no more famous than an everyday Joe. She can't even get a taxi to take her somewhere, which ends up involving the police until Irving, her manager, pays them off. When Ma Rainey isn't around, the band members discuss her abuse and the hardships of America's racism.

Contrary to the title, the main character of the play is the trumpet player, Levee. He is determined to make a name for himself in the world of jazz and intent on altering the never-changing method that Ma Rainey wishes for the band to play. He refers to her music as "jug band" blues and that the public no longer wishes to hear that sort of music. In response, he is composing music that he hopes will change the world. Meanwhile, his fellow band members accuse him of catering to the white man at any whim. He denies it, telling the group of his mother's gang rape by nine white men and his father's plot. When Levee finally gives his music to Sturdyvant, the studio owner, he is cheated out of them, further emphasizing the corruption of the recording industry and the inequality between black and white. After that, Levee explodes in a colossal act of violence, killing Toledo, one of his fellow band members.

I believe that August Wilson was trying to teach a very important lesson in a way that truly drove it home. He shows the fellowship of African Americans in that hard time in America when racism was so prevalent. He also shows that one doesn't have to be white to treat a black man like he is meaningless through his abusive potrayal of Ma Rainey. The play starts out light hearted with witty comments thrown between the band members that can make the audience laugh, but builds into a terrifyingly dark climax. Racism was no joke. It wasn't then, and it isn't now. These plays of revolutionary African American authors are here to remind its readers of how life was and to teach the lesson of hate's power and invalidity.