The Legacy of August Wilson

August Wilson had a tough childhood growing up. His birth father was estranged from the family and he was raised with his 5 brothers and sisters by his single mother living in a cold water flat behind a grocery store on Bedford Avenue in the Hill, a struggling neighborhood in Pittsburgh. “Wilson attended St. Richard Parochial School in Hill, then progressed to Central Catholic High School, in Pittsburgh’s Oakland section, in 1959. As the only African American student in the school, he was constantly threatened and harassed, so he left just before the end of his freshman year. He attended Connelley Vocational High School where he felt he wasn’t challenged enough and later switch to Gladstone High School. In 1960, at age 15, Wilson dropped out of Gladstone after a teacher accused him of plagiarizing a 20-page paper on Napoleon. He went on to receive his education at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh and on the streets of Pittsburgh. In 1999, Wilson was awarded the first and only high school diploma given the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.” (Biographical Sketch of August Wilson). Wilson had to deal with all that adversity throughout his childhood because he grew up poor and black in the 1950s and 1960s.  Even with all the odds stacked against him and without a formal high school education he was still able to becoming one of the greatest American play writers ever. I believe the legacy Wilson left behind is one that shows that you can make it anywhere in life no matter where you came from or what’s holding you back. Wilson never left the struggles of his childhood or the fact that he never graduated from a formal high school stop him from being great. I think that is why so many people still look up to him, besides that fact that he was a phenomenal play writer.