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Chapter IX: "I Can't Take It!":  
August Wilson Leaves Pittsburgh 

By Laurence Glasco 
Associate Professor of History, University of Pittsburgh 

              

Sala Udin never forgave [Claude] Purdy for luring August 
away from Pittsburgh, but in hindsight believes it was time 
for August to move on. 

− Laurence Glasco 

Abstract  

The story of August Wilson leaving Pittsburgh for St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1978. 
  

Keywords  
August Wilson, Brenda Burton, Sakina Ansari, Claude Purdy, Elva Branson, Sala Udin, Mary Bradley, Black 

Horizons Theatre, Kuntu Repertory Theatre, Ron Pitts, Vernell Lillie, Sarah Dixon, Curtiss Porter, Maisha Baton, 
Recycled, Coldest Day of the Year, The Homecoming, Black Bart and the Sacred Hills 

In the spring of 1977, Ron Pitts was parked outside The Original Hot Dog Shop, 
waiting for his friend August to come back from rehearsal. Vernell Lillie, the head of Kuntu 
Repertory Theatre, had asked August Wilson to direct Ed Bullins’s play, In New England 
Winter and Pitts knew there had been tension between the two. When August got in the car, 
it was immediately clear that something bad had happened. In fact, he 
learned, August and Vernell had gotten into a row that culminated in 
Vernell cursing him out. To Pitts’s astonishment, August announced with 
tears in his eyes that he was leaving, exclaiming “I can't take it! I can't do 
this!” At first, Pitts thought he meant he was leaving Vernell and Kuntu 
Repertory. “No!” August said emphatically. “He was leaving Pittsburgh,” 
said Pitts. “He was getting out of there.”1  

August’s falling out with Vernell capped a series of 
disappointments that stretched back eight years and involved much 
more than the head of the Kuntu Rep. It all began in 1969 when August 
angrily and abruptly quit Black Horizons Theatre over financial matters 
and the sort of politically-driven plays the theater was staging. The break 
was especially painful because, less than a year earlier, August had been one of the company’s 
co-founders.  

After the break, August returned to his first love, poetry, but now, even that brought 
disappointment. In the mid-1960s, August’s poetry—inspired by Dylan Thomas, John 
Berryman, and avant-garde white modernists—had drawn enthusiastic audience responses. 
Now, after the riots of 1968, audiences wanted a stronger black power message than August 

Laurence Glasco 



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was delivering. Curtiss Porter, one of the founders of the Black Studies Department at the 
University of Pittsburgh, recalls witnessing August reciting his poems at the Halfway Art 
Gallery, the main venue for poetry and cultural activities in black Pittsburgh, and being 
“rejected, dejected and almost ejected” while doing so. Porter says audiences almost felt like 
August “wasn't doing black poetry.”2 August himself was not happy with his poems, which 
were notoriously opaque and difficult to understand.  

As August struggled to find what he called his own poetic “voice,” he began to re-
engage—tentatively, partially, and informally—with Black Horizons Theatre. His new interest 
in the theater stemmed from the arrival in 1970 of Claude Purdy, a talented actor with whom 
August quickly bonded. Claude arrived in Pittsburgh with formal training in theater and years 
of acting in New York, Paris, and Nigeria. Pittsburgh actors and audiences were thrilled that 
Purdy and his girlfriend Elva Branson, the director of the company, were taking Black 
Horizons productions to a new level of excellence.  

Although August was still smarting from his break with Black Horizons and refusing 
to have anything to do with the company, at least formally, Claude’s presence proved an 
irresistible attraction. August began dropping by after rehearsals, when the actors had left, 
and going out for drinks, food, and conversation with Claude and Elva. He loved discussing 
all sorts of things with Claude and valued his feedback. He listened as Claude urged him to 
forget his avant-garde poetry and write in the way black people actually talk. Frank Hightower, 
who had replaced August when he quit Black Horizons, says Purdy told August to “find 
himself.”3  

In 1973, after two or three years of hanging out with Claude and Elva, August wrote 
his first play, Recycled. Claude and Elva planned to stage the play and had it in rehearsal at 
Black Horizons. However, nothing came of it because they suddenly left so that Claude could 
pursue a film career in Los Angeles. As they left, Elva surprised August by asking him to 
replace her as the director of Black Horizons. Just as surprising, August accepted the offer, a 
move that brought him back full circle with the company. Even so, Claude’s departure was 
another disappointment, depriving August of his closest friend and mentor.  

1973 brought August another painful disappointment, the breakup of his marriage. 
In 1969, he had married Brenda Burton and had a child, Sakina Ansari. However, August’s 
preference for casual, part-time jobs caused problems. The jobs gave him the free time he 
craved to walk the city, observe, and write, but the inadequate and irregular income strained 
the marriage, finally causing August’s wife to sue for divorce. The breakup was especially bitter 
because August dearly loved Brenda and their three-year-old daughter.  

1973, however, brought a couple of bright spots. One was the composition of 
“Morning Statement,” August’s first poem that he felt captured his own voice in simple, 
straight-forward, and understandable lines.4  Another was the invitation of his friend Rob 
Penny to work with him in cofounding a series of neighborhood theaters, each based on one 
of the seven principles of Kawaida, Ron Karenga’s African-based, nationalist philosophy.5 Rob 
hoped the theaters would engage Pittsburgh youth with Kawaida’s uplifting principles, a goal 
that August found exciting and ambitious.  

Rob and August set up their theater in Northview Heights, a troubled housing project 
on Pittsburgh’s North Side. The initiative soon floundered, however, because the 
neighborhood’s young people showed little commitment. They would apologize for missing 
a rehearsal, August says, but at the next rehearsal, “only two dudes would show up out of the 
six who said they were coming.” August thought the problem might be that he and Rob were 
from the Hill and so were regarded as outsiders.6 More likely, the problem was that the young 
people had not bought into the project because August and Rob had not asked them what 
kind of plays they wanted to perform.  

August and Rob soon abandoned the theater in Northview Heights, but their efforts 
had not gone unnoticed. A community activist from Hazelwood—where August had spent 
his teenage years—came by Rob’s office and asked if he would set up a theater in her 



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neighborhood. Sarah Dixon explained that Hazelwood had little to occupy its young people, 
who were running afoul of the law. She and her husband hoped that a children’s theater would 
keep the kids out of trouble and develop their reading and social skills.7  

Mrs. Dixon arranged for August and Rob to meet with the children, parents, and some 
of the staff at the Glen Hazel Recreation Center. Perhaps learning from their Northview 
Heights failure, Rob and August asked the youngsters what sort of plays they wanted to put 
on. The kids enthusiastically said Superfly, the popular Blaxploitation film featuring 
Youngblood Priest as a cocaine dealer trying to quit the business. 8  Because of the film’s 
glorification of the drug world, August laughed at the suggestion, and so did Ron Pitts and 
Mary Bradley, staff members of the Recreation Center.9 Rob, however, did not laugh. He went 
home and came back the next day with a script, threw it on the table, and told the kids they 
could do Superfly on the condition that afterwards they would do the plays that he and August 
wanted to do. The kids readily agreed.10  

Everyone wanted to be in the play, so it was easy picking the seven or eight needed 
for the cast. Rehearsals went well, although Mary Bradley detected tension between August 
and Rob.11 She never figured out the reason, but was puzzled that “there wasn’t the harmony” 
she had expected. 12  Apparently because of the tension, Rob distanced himself from the 
production and left most decisions to August and Ron Pitts. August enjoyed working with 
Ron, who was willing to do whatever would make the play a success, including chauffeuring 
August back and forth between Hazelwood and his apartment in the Hill District.13 August 
thought Pitts had talent, and encouraged him to act in Superfly, and even think about 
becoming an actor. Pitts was focused on completing high school and going to college, but said 
he would act in Superfly if August would do the same.14 At first, August resisted, but ultimately 
agreed to play the role of the white photographer while Pitts took the part of Scatter, the bar 
owner. In rehearsals, Pitts was astonished at August’s acting ability. “He was believable! He 
did it well!” Pitts exclaimed.15  

The community and August worked together to support the production. A sewing 
club made costumes. Sarah’s Dixon’s daughter helped with the artwork and announcements. 16  
August drew on skills he had acquired at Black Horizons to sketch a model of the lighting 
board and get the electrical shop at Connelley Vocational School to build it.17 However, like 
August and Rob, community members were bothered by Superfly’s celebration of the drug 
culture. A community group asked that before each performance a disclaimer be handed out 
saying attendees did not approve of drugs or violence.18 

The reception of Superfly far exceeded expectations. At every performance, the 
audience packed the 200-seat theater at the Glen Hazel Recreation Center, with the overflow 
standing around the edge of the auditorium.19 “Everybody wanted to come,” Pitts says. “They 
just kept coming. It was a beautiful sight, just a good feeling.”20  The production bolstered 
residents’ sense of pride and self-confidence. Pitts says: “We did it! It was all homemade, but 
it was ours. We … could look around and be very proud … It wasn’t a rich theater. But it was 
ours.21 And, he says, it gave people something to think about instead of the riots.22  

Parents thanked Rob and August for helping keep their kids occupied and out of 
trouble. 23  The mother of Gilbert, who played the lead role, said the experience had 
transformed her son. “When he got involved in this theater,” she said, Gilbert “became a whole 
different person. He got confidence in his self … and turned his life around.” She told August, 
“I can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done to my son.”24  The young actors loved the 
experience. One, however, gave mixed reviews of August, describing him as “encouraging … a 
great guy [someone] we were just crazy about,” but also someone who was “stand-offish … 
wouldn’t play with kids … didn’t laugh that much … looked like he always had things on his 
mind … [was] real serious.”25  

Superfly was a success, but was so exhausting that August and Rob dropped any idea 
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they christened their Hazelwood initiative “Ujima Theatre”—Ujima being the third principle 
of Kawaida and the Swahili term for collective work and responsibility.  

After the success of Superfly came the need to decide what plays to do next. The 
young people kept their promise and agreed to act in whatever plays August and Rob wanted 
to do. These turned out to be three classics from the Black Arts repertory: Amiri Baraka’s Black 
Mass, Ed Bullins’ The Corner, and Benjamin Caldwell’s Prayer Meeting. In addition, August 
seized the chance to stage his own play Recycled, which had been in rehearsal at Black 
Horizons when Elva and Claude left for California. That August chose to stage the play at 
Ujima suggests he was not devoting much time or energy to Black Horizons.  

Recycled was a one-act play that August both directed and acted in. August had 
directing experience from his time with Black Horizons, but other than his minor role in 
Superfly, he had no experience acting.27 The plotline was inspired by a gruesome scene August 
had witnessed earlier that year. A bartender and a patron got into an argument in which the 
bartender pursued the man into the street and shot him. A crowd gathered and, in an effort 
to revive him, a nurse began beating on his chest. Someone standing nearby said, “No need 
you beating on the man’s chest. That man dead. His brain laying right there on the car.” 
August followed the nurse, who crossed the street. She went into Pope’s Restaurant, and told 
Pope, “The niggers are killing one another these days.” Pope asked matter-of-factly, “Yeah, is 
he dead?” The nurse replied, “Yeah, I beat on his chest. He’s dead.”28  

That true-to-life exchange became part of the play’s opening scene. The setting is a 
bar in which a shot is heard off-stage. A man, played by August, enters the bar, and a woman 
says to no one in particular "The niggers are killing each other." Later, toward the end of the 
play, the woman says something that informs the audience that the man who was shot at the 
play’s opening has been “recycled” into this bar.29 

Recycled continues the figure of the outsider, a trope which had long intrigued 
August. In the opening scene, when the man comes into the bar, the woman looks at him and 
asks, “Where did you come from?” He replies, “Down the street lady. And did you forget?” She 
asks, “Forget about what?” To which he expounds, “Forget about everything. Long dancing 
one afternoon. … All the mean shit we gotten together.” Coldly dismissing the overblown 
rhetoric, the woman replies, “Nigger, I don’t know you from a lump of coal. You got a woman? 
Why don’t you go home to her.”30 The phrase “I don’t know you from a lump of coal” turns the 
man into an outsider, an unloved stranger. Some of the play’s dialogue retains the flowery, 
enigmatic language of August’s early poetry, but much of it captures the cadence and flow of 
black vernacular. Like August’s poem “Morning Statement,” which also was written in 1973, 
the play demonstrates he had listened to Claude Purdy and was becoming more skilled in 
capturing the way blacks talk. 

In addition to being inspired by an actual tragedy, Recycled references August’s recent 
divorce. August says that, at the time, he was suffering the breakup of his marriage, and the 
play was “a way to get [the anger] out of me, kind of find a way to purge that, to write about 
that in poetry and whatnot.” 31  However, the anger caused August to overact, sometimes 
dangerously. At one point, his character was to strike the female antagonist, played by Maisha 
Baton. August hit her so hard that people wondered whether his emotions had gotten the 
better of him. Years later, Maisha could be philosophical about the incident, but clearly had 
not found it funny at the time. “We only did it that one time,” she laughs. “I wasn't going to 
let him hit me again!”32  Despite fairly realistic and understandable dialogue, people were 
baffled by the plot. “What's it about?” they asked. “Where is he going with this?” 33 The first 
night’s performance at the Recreation Center had a large turnout because people thought it 
was going to be like Superfly. But Pitts needed only one word to describe attendance at the 
second performance: “Phew!” 34  

August was beside himself. Trying to figure out why his play had failed to connect, he 
asked Pitts for advice. But Pitts was not about to offer any. August, he says, was so “moody” 
and “intense” that it seemed he was “going to explode.”35 Not long afterwards, August did 



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explode. During a rehearsal for Ed Bullins’ play, The Corner,36 he became irritated by several 
actors who were not taking things seriously. They resisted directions and argued over minor 
points. “I'm not going to do this part. I'm not going to do that part.”37 The most troublesome 
was Rodney, who had been part of the original group that asked Rob and August to do theater 
in Hazelwood. Rodney always had a story to tell while actors were trying to rehearse. Finally, 
August lost patience and said firmly, “Hey man, we’re rehearsing." Rodney’s reply, “Oh man, 
we can do it later," enraged August, who picked up a chair and hurled it through a window.38 
Pitts was shocked. “I had never seen August get that mad,” he says. “I could see the frustration 
building up in him. I could see it, but I did not know what he would do. And when he walked 
over to the chair and picked it up and threw it through the window, everybody stopped.” Pitts 
feared August might do the same to Rodney. “This guy’s crazy,“ he said to himself. August 
went on for quite a while, cursing at Rodney and finally ordering him to “get the hell out of 
here!”39 

After the disappointment of Recycled, August waited three years before writing 
another play. But in 1976 he wrote The Coldest Day of the Year and staged it at Ujima. Directed 
by Rob and featuring August and Maisha performing together once again, the one-act play 
was patterned after Samuel Becket’s Waiting for Godot. The setting is a cold winter day in 
which an elderly man engages in tortured conversation with a woman waiting for someone at 
a bus stop.40 The play deals with male-female relations and, August says, was partly inspired 
by a breakup with his girlfriend of the time. The play’s theme was engaging, but the dialogue 
contained such forgettable lines as “Our lives are frozen in the deepest hate and spiritual 
turbulence.” As one can imagine, the audience hated the play, and it closed after one 
performance.41 Realizing once again that audiences did not like his plays, August shelved a 
third play he was working on, “Rite of Passage,” which to this day remains unpublished, 
undated, and unperformed.42  

With their egos bruised, August and Rob lost interest in Ujima. The theater, in 
August’s words, “just like faded out”43 and closed later in 1976.44 The experience taught August 
that political theater, as well as theater with esoteric dialogue and complicated plotlines, 
would not connect with the public, especially with the sort of grassroots public that he wanted 
to reach.45 

Frustrated that audiences had so soundly rejected his plays, August tried something 
new: incorporating music and dance into the play. The idea emerged when August began 
hanging out with Bob Johnson, a talented newcomer with a combined interest in dance and 
theater. “BJ,” as he was called, came to Pittsburgh in 1970, and brought with him a wide-
ranging interest in dance, theater, and cinema. Born in 1938 in New York, he had worked with 
such major troupes as the Alvin Ailey Studio, the Katherine Dunham School, the June Taylor 
Dance Studio, and the New Lafayette Theatre Workshop. He had performed in the original 
New York Shakespeare Festival production of Hair and acted in Ed Bullins’ Goin’ a Buffalo at 
the American Place Theatre.46 He had even appeared in the film Midnight, the sequel to the 
Pittsburgh-made film Night of the Living Dead.47  

Recruited by the Black Studies Department in 1970, Johnson founded a number of 
well-regarded initiatives.48 One was the student-based Black Horizons Dance Ensemble that 
performed around town and at productions of Black Horizons Theatre. Two others were the 
Bob Johnson Dancers and the Harambee Dancers, which also drew enthusiastic audiences.49 
BJ’s most important group, the Black Theater Dance Ensemble, was founded in 1972, and 
boasted two members of the Alvin Ailey Studio as instructors.50 The word “theater” in the 
name reflected BJ’s desire to combine theater with music and dance. The Pittsburgh Theater 
Dance Ensemble quickly became a leading feature in Pittsburgh’s Black Arts movement.  

In addition to his dancing skill, BJ had what August called a “warrior spirit.” He 
demonstrated that spirit during an unforgettable outing with August, Rob, and other poets to 
Western State Penitentiary. The men had been invited to perform for the inmates, but 
unfortunately, BJ did not bring along the female members of his company. When the inmates 



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realized this, they vigorously let their unhappiness be known.51 August and Rob came out to 
read poetry, and the inmates made it clear they didn’t want to hear any poetry. BJ started 
dancing, and the men let it be known that they didn’t want to see him dance. They wanted 
the women. Finally, in a move that August never forgot, BJ went out on stage and, in front of 
four hundred very unhappy men, danced a solo tribute to baseball great Roberto Clemente 
with such power and feeling that, by the time he finished, the inmates were applauding and 
calling for more.52 

August admired BJ for his “warrior spirit” that had been on display at the penitentiary. 
August was overjoyed when BJ established Theatre Urge in 1975 and asked him to direct Phillip 
Hayes Dean’s play, Owl Killer, for the company. He considered the chance to work with BJ “a 
great experience.” Apparently BJ did not feel the same, for he never again asked August to 
direct a play for him, to August’s great disappointment. “I thought that BJ would ask me to do 
other stuff,” August lamented. “I used to go home and think about plays I would direct. And 
then the next play he did, he had some group from Philadelphia come in and direct it and I 
was wounded by that.”53 

August regretted this rebuff by BJ, but he continued to engage with theater, now with 
a new company at the University of Pittsburgh, Kuntu Repertory Theatre. Under the direction 
of Vernell Lillie, a newcomer to the city, Kuntu quickly became the city’s leading producer of 
black theater. Born in 1931 in the Brazos Bottoms region of Texas, Vernell earned a degree in 
speech and drama at Dillard University and taught in the Houston public schools. There, she 
and her husband founded a theater with a nationalist agenda that sought to raise racial 
consciousness through literary readings and dramatic collages.54  

In 1969, Vernell came to Pittsburgh to pursue graduate studies at Carnegie-Mellon 
University, concentrating in psychodrama.55 She was completing her doctoral program when, 
in 1973, Curtiss Porter recruited her to teach in Pitt’s Black Studies Department.56  Vernell 
agreed to do so, but had no intention of starting a theater. She simply wanted to finish her 
dissertation and return to Houston. However, despite misgivings, in 1973 she founded Kuntu 
Repertory Theatre.57 Kuntu had a nationalist orientation and was self-consciously part of the 
Black Arts movement. The company’s very name is derived from a Central African word for 
“way” or “mode,” a term popularized by German scholar Janheinz Jahn, whose book Muntu 
argued that Africa has a unified cultural essence and esthetic.58  

Vernell quickly bonded with her colleague in Black Studies, Rob Penny. She liked that 
his plays focused on the lives of the marginalized and provided what Vernell called positive 
“propaganda” aimed at getting black men “to think about their responsibilities.”59 She also 
admired Rob’s portrayal of women. “He can create women with such beauty,” Vernell says, 
even “better than most … female writers.”60  

Vernell had reservations about August, who she felt was not a committed black 
nationalist. “I don't remember August dealing at all with the ideas of Baraka,” she says, “or the 
other black writers.”61 Vernell felt August did not measure up to Rob as a playwright,62 and she 
was not alone in that regard. Most black Pittsburghers considered Rob the city’s premiere 
black playwright, and ranked August a clear second. Mary Bradley, who had worked with both 
men at Ujima, says Rob was the one who was always getting the recognition. “Never August.” 
Years later, Bradley was surprised that it was August, not Rob, who became nationally 
famous.63  

Vernell came to know August because he spent so much time in Rob’s office—even 
when Rob was not there. August was in Rob’s office so much that Brenda Berrian, a new faculty 
member, at first confused the two men. “He lived there!” she exclaims.64 August also palled 
around with two of the department’s other theatrically inclined members, BJ and Maisha. The 
three developed what Berrian calls a “little clique … really tight … like brothers and sisters.”65 
Almost every noon, they would head over to Pace’s Restaurant nearby in Oakland and spend 
lunchtime “solving the world’s problems.”66 



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August began stopping by Kuntu Repertory rehearsals, working with the actors and 
helping them learn their lines. As usual, he remained the outsider, staying on the periphery, 
not saying much, not asking many questions, and carefully observing. 67  When Rob told 
Vernell that August had experience as a director, she asked him to direct two plays for her, The 
Corner by Ed Bullins and Prayer Meeting, or The First Militant Minister by Ben Caldwell. She 
was impressed with August’s directing skills, feeling that he exhibited “sophisticated 
approaches” to blocking, character development, plot nuances, social purposes of the author, 
and the capabilities of each actor.68 

When Rob told Vernell that August also wrote plays, she asked him if he had anything 
that Kuntu might stage. August told her that he had three plays, two of which—Recycled and 
The Coldest Day of the Year—were still being revised. But a third one, The Homecoming, was 
“complete.”69 In 1976, Lillie staged The Homecoming at Schenley High School and at Ujima in 
Hazelwood.70  

The Homecoming is a fictionalized account of two men’s reactions to the death of 
their friend, blues singer Blind Lemon Jefferson. Called Blind Willie Johnson in the play 
(ironically there was an actual blues singer by that name), Jefferson was a Texas-born 
bluesman and guitarist who sang for a pittance on street corners and at social gatherings. 
Sometime in the late 1920s, Paramount Records asked him to come to Chicago and make some 
recordings. Considered by many the “Father of Texas blues,” Jefferson complained of 
exploitation by the record company. 71  Legend has it that, one morning after a recording 
session, he was found dead on a cold, wintry street.72 The play is set in an abandoned train 
station in rural Alabama where two men, Obadiah and Leroy, are waiting for the arrival of 
Blind Willie’s coffin. Two white agents from a Northern record company happen to be in the 
station, and tell Obadiah and Leroy that they are looking for bluesmen to come North and 
record. With fresh memories of what happened to their friend in Chicago, they gain revenge 
by killing the agents. 73  A play about black men settling racial scores through violent 
retribution makes The Homecoming August’s first play to fully embody the sort of racial 
violence and nationalism championed by Baraka and others of the Black Arts movement. In 
addition, its characters bear identity traits that August admired and are part of his own 
identity, those of the warrior and the race man. Obadiah and Leroy are poor, uneducated, and 
rural, the sort of traditionally subservient blacks that Baraka wanted black theater to convince 
of the need to strike a blow for revenge and racial retribution.  

However, August was not comfortable with plays that project such an overtly political 
message. As a result, The Homecoming became his first—and only—play fully in the tradition 
of Baraka. August recognized as much when he said that he liked Baraka, and in his early one-
act plays—presumably The Homecoming—he tried to imitate Baraka. But then, he says, he 
realized he “wasn’t [Baraka] and that wasn’t going to work.”74 The Homecoming taught August 
that he couldn’t, or didn’t want to, do political theater. It should also have taught him that his 
dialogue remained opaque and unnatural. The Homecoming was full of such forgettable lines 
as, ”Well, I’ll tell you, it’s cold up North, all right. That’s what I hear anyway. Froze to death! 
Don’t make much sense. Yessir, that’s something the way they treated Blind Willie.”75 Vernell 
had grave misgivings about The Homecoming, and concluded that August had a future as a 
director but not as a playwright.76  

I had no idea that he was going to emerge as the great, great playwright. I really 
thought he was going to emerge on the national scene as a tremendous director. And 
I still say that maybe the secret to his success as a playwright is that he was just so 
good as a director, and that he saw people on stage. It doesn’t matter whether or not 
he had the words to go in their mouths. He saw them on the stage. He saw them in 
conflicts. He saw them needing to make change. And then he saw their flaws as well.77  
In addition to harboring doubts about August’s skills as a playwright, Vernell did not 

warm to him personally. “[I]t was not that I was denying August,” she says. “[Y]ou must keep 
in mind that, at this point, August Wilson was not at all involved in playwriting. He had only 



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written one play.” And, she adds proudly, “I was the first one to ever produce [that first] August 
Wilson play.”78 Similarly, August had ambivalent feelings about Vernell, and minimizes their 
relationship. “I didn’t really have a relationship with Vernell,” he says, “other than the fact that 
… she discovered that I wrote this one-act play that she wanted to do …. And so she said she 
wanted to do it, and I said okay.” 79 

Disappointed at his failed efforts in theater at Black Horizons, at Ujima, with BJ, and 
now with Vernell, August once again turned back to poetry. He did so at a Black Studies 
initiative, the Kuntu Writers Workshop, founded in 1976 by Rob and Maisha, and meant to 
provide a space where playwrights could come together, support one another, and get 
feedback. Once the workshop started up, Rob realized that poetry remained popular, so much 
so that he opened it to poets as well.80 Rob did not mind August’s focus on poetry because he 
considered himself a poet. Vernell says that Rob and August both thought that “the highest 
honor was to be called a poet, and they would correct you on not calling them a poet.”81 

Maisha Baton, the other leader of the Workshop, had worked with August at Ujima 
and brought considerable experience to the project. Born in 1939 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 
Maisha (née Shirley) had moved to New York at the age of seventeen, planning to become a 
nurse. Realizing that she did not like nursing, she took a variety of jobs that paid the rent for 
an apartment in the East Village.82  While living there, Maisha never met Baraka, but did 
attend poetry readings by Beat poets, including Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso.83 Their 
writing appealed because “It had a rhythm, it had a beat that was more like the old poets, John 
Donne and Baudelaire. … [They] were saying, ‘Bam Bam Bam Bam, I saw the best minds of 
my generation,’ you know, Ginsburg, ‘destroyed by madness, starving, naked, dragging 
themselves’.” Maisha committed to poetry once she realized that poetry doesn't have to be 
“that little quiet Emily Dickinson thing.” 84  She liked the Beats but, being shy, did not 
participate in their poetry readings.85 In 1969 or 1970, she moved to Pittsburgh, where a cousin 
lived, and settled in the Hill. In short order, she joined Black Horizons Theatre, where Claude 
Purdy was directing.86  Maisha liked that Pittsburgh had a strong sense of community and 
featured a number of places where writers, artists, and actors gathered regularly.87 Along with 
August, Rob Penny, Sala Udin, BJ, and others, Maisha hung out Eddie’s Restaurant, where in 
the 1970s she wrote a play, Tears for Living Children, which BJ later staged at the Laboratory 
Theatre Center.88  

Maisha and August began dating on and off. As she recalls, “What happened was he 
was obsessed with writing and I was interested, [but] not as obsessed as he was. But still in 
love with the writer and the writing and the potential … so we hung out together a lot.”89 
August and others especially appreciated that Maisha had a car. “That was another reason they 
liked me,” she says, laughing. “If somebody needed to go somewhere, if there was a theater 
thing … I would drive.”90 Like August, Maisha was struggling to find her own voice, sometimes 
in ways that took on humorous aspects. One snowy night, while driving August and Claude 
back from a poetry reading, Maisha stopped the car, turned around, and announced to one 
and all: “I must not be a poet because I don't sound like them. Something’s wrong." 91 Claude 
said a bit nervously, “we’ll talk about it later.” But Maisha wanted to talk about it then and 
there. “I'm really worried about it. I don’t have the voice, the rhythm,” she said as the car went 
into a snow bank. August and Claude started hollering, “keep going, keep going,” but Maisha 
did not move. She needed “to think this rhythm thing” through. Years later, she could laugh 
about that evening. “I'll never forget those guys shouting and trying to make me get out of 
that snow.”92 

Maisha touched August’s life in a variety of ways. When he joined the Kuntu Writers 
Workshop, August became one of three co-leaders, focusing on poetry while Rob focused on 
fiction. The workshop met every other Saturday at the Black Studies Department. August still 
worked at temporary, low-paying jobs, and often did not have money for bus fare, so he had 
to walk two miles from his apartment in East Liberty. But as a true bohemian he didn’t mind. 
“I walked and I said that’s okay because when I get there I can get fifty cents from Rob and … 



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get me some cigarettes. And Rob will give me a ride home, and I’m cool man. That’s all I 
needed, that’s all I wanted. To get … cigarettes and then talk about poetry.”93  

August and Maisha had misgivings about the way Rob ran the Workshop. Rob’s easy-
going personality made him reluctant to critique others’ work, whereas August thought 
feedback was very important. In addition, August and Maisha disliked that Rob did not make 
participants bring original work to the Workshop.94 Especially aggravating to August was the 
political nature of the writing that Rob encouraged. Natalie Bazzell, a member of the 
Workshop, noticed that August’s poetry was distinctly less political and Afrocentric than 
Rob’s. “A lot of the poetry at that time,” Natalie says, “was very rhetorical, very black black 
black power, nigger nigger nigger. It was more than that, but it had a lot of that in it.” Natalie 
adds that Rob’s poetry was like that, but August’s was very different.95 August enjoyed the 
Writers Workshop, but his writing was still floundering. His poetry lacked the political 
militancy that was popular. His directing had not impressed BJ. His plays had not appealed to 
general audiences. And his one overtly political play had not impressed Vernell. 

August was looking for a new approach, and turned to the advice of his old friend, 
Claude Purdy. Claude always had high regard for August’s talent, but for years had urged him 
to try something different, something that would be artistic but also would have popular 
appeal. Acting on Claude’s suggestion, August tried writing a musical satire. The effort began 
in 1973, just before Claude left for Los Angeles, with a long poem about the exploits of a black 
bandit in the old West, entitled “Black Bart and the Hills.”1 August at first was unsure what to 
do with the poem, and had given it as a present to his girlfriend, Barbara Evans. However, soon 
afterwards, he apparently decided to develop the poem, and asked Barbara to return it.96  

August’s desire to convert “Black Bart” into a musical may also have been inspired by 
BJ. In 1975, Johnson planned to have Theatre Urge stage a musical about Stagger Lee, the 
mythical black renegade of the early twentieth century whose adventures were celebrated in 
song and folklore. BJ wanted the production to include dance and music, and so contacted 
August and a local musician, Nelson Harrison, to work with him. The three met frequently to 
discuss creating such a work. It was decided that Harrison would do the music, BJ would 
sketch out some scenes, and August would write the script. In the end, however, nothing came 
of the idea.97 One more disappointment. 

However, working on Stagger Lee may have given August the idea for converting his 
poem about a black cowboy into a musical, Black Bart and the Sacred Hills. Originally titled 
“Black Bart and the Hills,” the poem invoked the memory of an actual historical figure, Charlie 
Bolles, a white Englishman and stagecoach robber whose place in the folklore of the American 
West ranks just behind Jesse James and Billy the Kid.98 Bolles’ name and notoriety were the 
only things “black” about him, but he had remarkable flamboyance, a sense of humor, and 
open disdain for the elite. After each robbery, he would leave behind a poem that had the sort 
of impudent, sardonic humor that August loved. One example:  

I've labored long and hard for bread, 
For honor, and for riches, 
But on my corns too long you've tread, 
You fine-haired sons of bitches. 
                                    Black Bart, 187799 
While August was working on Black Bart, his old friend Claude Purdy, after several 

years in Los Angeles, shelved hopes of breaking into the movies and joined Penumbra, a newly 
formed black theater company in St. Paul, Minnesota. Then, in 1977, just as August was 
working on Black Bart, Claude and Elva returned to Pittsburgh and joined the Pittsburgh City 
Players, an experimental, integrated theater on the North Side.100 

                                                           
1 Although long poem titles are typically placed in italics, we are going to keep the poem version of “Black Bart” 

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Upon their return, Claude and Elva learned that Black Horizons Theatre no longer 
existed. They tried to learn what happened, but August and others spoke only in the vaguest 
of terms.101 The theater seems to have faded away with no formal death notice.102 Curtiss Porter 
thinks it closed “around” 1972; Rob Penny says it was functioning “off and on” as late as 1973.103 
Those dates suggest that Black Horizons closed not long after Elva appointed August to head 
it. 

One night after their return to Pittsburgh, Claude and Elva went to the Crawford Grill 
to hear August read “Black Bart and the Sacred Hills.” Claude liked the poem, and thought it 
had commercial possibilities. He was aware that in the late 1960s, black cowboys had become 
all the rage following the republication of The Life and Adventures of Nat Love, the 1907 
autobiography of a black cowboy nicknamed Deadwood Dick. In 1976, Fred Hudson and 
Roger Furman of New York’s Black Theatre Alliance announced plans to do a play about 
Love.104 Penumbra Theatre was interested enough that it staged Deadwood Dick: Legend of 
the West as part of its 1979-1980 season.105  

Claude urged August to convert “Black Bart” into a musical or, even better, a movie 
that he would direct. “Hey man we could make this into a film!” he said excitedly.106 August 
liked the idea, and plunged into the challenge. Once August got excited about something, says 
his friend Lee Kiburi, he was like a little kid in terms of his enthusiasm.107 “[N]ot knowing any 
better,” August says, he sat down and, working almost non-stop, converted his poem in just 
one week into a 137-page, single-spaced musical satire.108 

Because a musical score requires collaboration, August brought in Maisha and BJ to 
work with him and Claude. The four held brainstorming sessions at Maisha’s apartment and 
occasionally at Kuntu Writers Workshop.109 Maisha tape recorded some of the collaboration. 
On one tape, Claude can be heard encouraging August: “Come on, let's do it … I know you can 
work that up. Have Bart saying blah blah blah.” August replies, “Let me try it this way,” and 
others join in with their own suggestions.110  

Black Bart shows that August was starting to follow Claude’s suggestions about 
writing dialogue that reflects how people actually talk. He had begun doing this in his short, 
1973 poem, “Morning Statement,” but now he was doing it in a much longer work. Elva noticed 
approvingly that with Bart, August had begun to write dialogue “just the way he heard it.”111 
Maisha also noticed the change. She says that August’s early plays—Recycled and The Coldest 
Day of the Year—were written in his “James Joyce voice” in which the characters speak “classic” 
English. However, in Bart, the characters “talk, and talk shit.” Years later, Maisha says, the Bart 
voice takes over and “becomes Ma Rainey, becomes Two Trains [Running].”112 

Bart, the musical’s central character, is a black cattleman who is angry that the 
government has built a railroad through his ranch. Turning to rustling as a form of revenge, 
he gets caught and thrown in jail. After taking a course in magic, Bart escapes and settles in a 
retreat he calls the Sacred Hills, where he begins making gold out of water, aiming to flood 
the world with so much of the precious metal that it would lose its value. Bart hangs out with 
a zany, interracial cast of characters with wickedly funny names. Master Divine—a spoof of 
Father Divine, the founder of a black religious cult in the 1920s—is a preacher and self-
admitted “fake prophet.” Pharaoh Goldstein, the Mayor of Little Egypt, is a member of the 
Culturally Independent Adults (C.I.A.) and financial overseer of the Nile Valley Pyramid 
Construction Company. Horsefeathers, the all-knowing Indian narrator, can be found sitting 
atop a barrel in front of the “Hoedown in the John” saloon, owned by Chauncey Riff Raff III. 
Mother Principle is the madam who oversees the female workers at the Hoedown saloon, also 
known as the “Ain’t No Ho’ Down in the John” saloon.113  

The musical’s dialogue captures the cadence and lilt of black speech, as in this 
interchange between Horsefeathers and Sweet Delight, one of the “fancy ladies” at the 
Hoedown saloon:  

H F: Just call me stranger. 
S D: Okay. Stranger. 



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H F: I put your key on the dresser. 
S D: Okay Stranger. You sound kind of different. 
H F: You do too. You sure I’m in the right room? 
S D: Sure, daddy. You write [sic] where you belong.114 
Nelson Harrison, who composed the music, was extraordinarily talented and 

something of a Renaissance man. As a child, Harrison had played trombone with the 
Pittsburgh Youth Symphony. Later he played for the likes of Dionne Warwick, Nancy Wilson 
and James Brown when they came through Pittsburgh. Along the way, Harrison composed 
original musical scores, most notably “Isis au Noir,” a reinterpretation of the Egyptian legend 
of Isis and Osiris.115 The songs Harrison composed for Black Bart included gems with such 
ironic titles as “The Last Stop Camel Feed and Water Company,” “The Hoedown in the 
Gambling Hall,” and “The Nile Valley Pyramid Construction Company.”  

August, Pitts, and the other actors felt good about the musical. BJ’s Theatre Urge was 
chosen to stage it, with Claude directing and Ron Pitts playing the role of Black Bart.116 Given 
this enthusiasm, one can understand August’s great disappointment when, at the last minute, 
he had to tell the group that the performance was cancelled. He had been unable to raise the 
necessary financing.117  

 
1977 August leaves Pittsburgh 

 
The collapse of Black Bart was one more in a long list of disappointments. To make 

matters worse, the musical’s closing was followed by a confrontation with Vernell. In 1977, 
Vernell had asked August to direct Ed Bullins’s play, In New England Winter, for Kuntu 
Repertory. The play was to open in late June at the University’s Studio Theatre, with a cast 
drawn both from Kuntu and BJ’s Theatre Urge.118 August was thrilled. He considered this the 
biggest project he had ever done.119  

Unfortunately, the personal chemistry was not good between the two. Vernell had a 
reputation as being strong-willed and insistent, and the same was true of August. Vernell 
apparently became unhappy with August, or with his directing, or both. The upshot was that 
the two clashed sharply one evening, and Vernell cursed him out. This was the confrontation 
that occurred while Ron Pitts was parked outside Oakland’s Original Hot Dog Shop waiting 
to drive August home. August got in the car, visibly agitated, and related what had happened. 
With tears in his eyes, he announced he was leaving, and exclaimed, “I can't take it!” 120  

Pitts was astonished. He found August’s announcement “surreal, almost like a play 
he was writing.” When August confirmed that he was serious, Pitts pleaded, “Man, you got to 
finish what you started.” Pitts knew this was not the first time August had said he was going 
to leave. “But this time,” Pitts says, “you could see it in his face. He was going to be with Claude 
Purdy somewhere in Minnesota. He was through with everything—Ujima, Kuntu—anything 
that had to do with theater in Pittsburgh.”121 

August, in fact, had been in touch with Claude, who by then was happily ensconced 
in St. Paul, directing plays for Penumbra. Claude loved Penumbra. He loved St. Paul. And he 
very much missed August. Wanting to work together again, he sent August an airplane ticket 
around Christmas, 1977, inviting him to come to St. Paul and revise Black Bart.122  August 
found the invitation too good to resist. He said to himself, “A free trip to St. Paul? What the 
hell.”123  

The following January, August left for St. Paul. Before he did, he stopped by the home 
of his old friend, Thad Mosley, to tell him about his plans. Most people think August left 
Pittsburgh in order to work with Penumbra, but that is not what August told Thad. “I can 
remember as plain as day,” Thad says, “he told me he was going to Minneapolis to go to the 
Tyrone Guthrie drama school.”124 The Guthrie would have been attractive to someone with 
August’s ambitions. Founded in 1963 and located just across the Mississippi River from St. 
Paul, it staged plays of the highest quality while avoiding the cut-throat commercial 



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environment of Broadway.125 Elva Branson confirms that August’s goal was the Guthrie. She 
says August wound up at Penumbra because that was “Claude’s connection,” but he always 
had his eye on the Guthrie. “I know that.”126  

Thad was stunned at August’s leaving, but he was even more stunned at the reason. 
“I’m stopping writing poetry,” August said. “You don’t get anything back from poetry.”127 Thad 
considered this an astonishing statement from someone who had always considered himself 
first and foremost a poet.128 It was a sign that, after so many disappointments, August hoped 
that, with revisions and further work, Black Bart and the Sacred Hills could achieve the sort 
of popular and critical success that had long evaded him. 

On a snowy winter’s day in early January, 1978, August caught a plane to St. Paul.129 
On his way to the airport, he stopped by to see Maisha.130 While there, he asked her for some 
Valium to ease his anxieties about flying.131 “He left for Minnesota,” Maisha says, “practically 
from my house.”132 As August left, he implored Pitts to keep Kuntu going. “Man, you got to do 
it. You’re what's going to keep theater going in Pittsburgh.” Pitts declined, partly because he 
didn’t want to deal with Vernell.133 

August’s departure left his friends despondent. Sala Udin never forgave Purdy for 
luring August away from Pittsburgh, but in hindsight believes it was time for August to move 
on.134 August’s leaving added to the decline of Pittsburgh’s Black Arts movement. “It was a 
thriving scene for a while,” says Ralph Proctor, a major collector of African art, “but when the 
movement died, it all died. Everybody just scattered and went their own way.”135 

August had been only on the periphery of the Black Arts movement, but he regularly 
expressed his commitment to cultural nationalism. Despite that avowed commitment, Black 
Bart distanced him even further from the movement. The play has elements of protest, but 
satire is not designed to politicize the masses and raise their consciousness—certainly not in 
the way that Baraka or Karenga wanted. Black Bart illustrates the argument of Sandra 
Shannon that August embraced the politics of empowerment and cultural affirmation, but 
his writing “was not to be the belligerent, vindictive voice of Baraka or Bullins but the subtly 
provocative … voice of a playwright with some thoughts of his own.”136  

There is no question that things had not worked out as August had wanted. His lack 
of formal education had limited his job prospects. His marriage had failed because he couldn’t 
provide for his family. His poetry and plays had been poorly received by the public. His efforts 
at a musical had been canceled for lack of funding. He was a distant second to Rob Penny in 
the local theater scene. And now he had fallen out with Vernell, the most important figure in 
black theater in the city.  

Leaving was difficult, for Pittsburgh was August’s home town. He loved the city, but 
the two had what he called a “love-hate relationship.” He told his friend and theater critic 
Christopher Rawson, “This is my home and at times I miss it and find it tremendously 
exciting, and other times I want to catch the first thing out that has wheels.”137 In this case, 
August left in something that has wings. But he left nonetheless. Afterwards, August would 
return for visits, but he never again lived in Pittsburgh.  

In St. Paul, August suffered several disappointments before he finally achieved 
success. That success, however, would be based on the continuing influence of Pittsburgh. 
This is because, in a real sense, August never left. Years later, when asked about leaving for St. 
Paul, he replied: “I never really left. You carry your home with you wherever you go. … I carry 
[Pittsburgh] around in my heart with me.”138 Pittsburgh remained for August “the deep well 
of memory into which he kept dipping the ladle of his art.”139 “I can’t take it!” became “I can 
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1 Ron Pitts, interview by Lee Kiburi, 23 November 2007. 
2 Curtiss Porter, interview by Lee Kiburi, 28 November 2007. 
3 Frank Hightower, interview by author, 12 November 2013. 
4 Vera Sheppard, “August Wilson: An Interview,” in Jackson R. Bryer and Mary C. Hartig, 

eds., Conversations with August Wilson (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2006), p. 
103. 

5 Rob Penny, interview, interview by Lee Kiburi, 18 August 1998. 
6 August Wilson, interview by Lee Kiburi, 6 April 1999. 
7 Mary Bradley, interview by Lee Kiburi, 11 October 2011. 
8 Ibid. 
9 Ibid. 
10 Ibid.; Ron Pitts, interview by Lee Kiburi, 23 November 2007; August Wilson interview 

by Lee Kiburi, 6 April 1999. 
11 Ron Pitts, interview by Lee Kiburi, 23 November 2007. The cast, as best Pitts can recall, 

consisted of Robbie Dixon, Greg Jones, Joyce Dixon, Eileen, Kenny Robinson and his brother, 
plus a few others. 

12 Mary Bradley, interview by Lee Kiburi, 11 October 2011. 
13  Mary Bradley, interview by Lee Kiburi, 11 October 2011; Ron Pitts, interview by Lee 

Kiburi, 23 November 2007. 
14 Ron Pitts, interview by Lee Kiburi, 23 November 2007. 
15 Ibid. 
16 Ibid. The daughter was Joyce. Mary Bradley, interview by Lee Kiburi, 11 October 2011. 
17 Rob Penny, interview by Lee Kiburi, 18 August 1998. 
18 Mary Bradley, interview by Lee Kiburi, 11 October 2011. 
19 Mary Bradley, interview by Lee Kiburi, 11 October 2011. 
20 Ron Pitts, interview by Lee Kiburi, 23 November 2007. 
21 Ron Pitts, interview by Lee Kiburi, 23 November 2007. 
22 Ibid. 
23 August Wilson, interview by Lee Kiburi, 6 April 1999 . 
24 Ibid. 
25 Noel McCarroll, interview by Lee Kiburi, 30 July 2013. 
26 Ibid.  
27 Elva Branson, interview by the author, 8 May 2017. 
28 August Wilson, interview by Lee Kiburi, 6 April 1999. 
29 Maisha Baton, interview by Lee Kiburi, 26 December 2007.  
30 August Wilson, interview by Lee Kiburi, 6 April 1999. 
31 Ibid. 
32 Maisha Baton, interview by Lee Kiburi, 26 December 2007. 
33 Ibid. 
34 Ron Pitts, interview by Lee Kiburi, 23 November 2007. 
35 Ibid. 
36 Ibid. 
37 Ibid. 
38 Ibid. 
39 Ibid. 
 
 

Notes 

 



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40 Shannon mentions 1976 and 1977. For 1976, see Sandra Shannon, The Dramatic Vision 

of August Wilson (Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1995), p. 30 (hereafter cited as 
Shannon, The Dramatic Vision of August Wilson).For 1977, see Sandra G. Shannon, “August 
Wilson Explains His Dramatic Vision,” in Jackson R. Bryer and Mary C. Hartig, eds., 
Conversations with August Wilson (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2006), p. 122.  

41 Maisha Baton, interview by Lee Kiburi, 26 December 2007. 
42 Shannon, The Dramatic Vision of August Wilson, p. 241. Shannon lists the full set of 

Wilson’s unpublished plays, including those written for the Science Museum of Minnesota. 
43 August Wilson, interview by Lee Kiburi, 6 April 1999. 
44 August Wilson, interview by Lee Kiburi, 6 April 1999. 
45 Ujima was a failure for August, but for Pitts it was transformative. After finishing his 

studies at the University of Pittsburgh, Pitts took a job with an optical firm in Columbus, 
Ohio. There, inspired by his years at Ujima, he joined a theater company that, ironically, also 
bore the name Ujima. Ron Pitts, interview by the author, 13 February 2015. 

46  Allegheny Repertory Theatre, Press Release, 1982-09-23 for the premiere of August 
WIlson’s Jitney at the Fine Line Cultural Center, 3300 Fifth Avenue in Oakland. University of 
Pittsburgh Theater Archives, Hillman Library. 

47 Walter Ray Watson, “Choreographer Bob Johnson Remembered,” Pittsburgh Courier, 11 
Oct 1986: 6. 

48 “Spotlight on African Art Folk Festival,” Pittsburgh Courier, 16 May 1970: 3. 
49 “BAS Slates Black Week,” Pittsburgh Courier, 7 November 1970: 8. 
50 “Ailey Dancers Teach Master Class at Local Center,” by Greg Mims, Pittsburgh Courier, 

16 March 1974: 17. 
51 “Choreographer Bob Johnson Remembered,” by Walter Ray Watson, Pittsburgh Courier, 

11 October 1986: 6. 
52 Ibid. The present author saw BJ dance once, in a solo rehearsal. The performance was 

so moving, it brought me almost to tears. Johnson’s talent and power had to be seen to be 
apprciated. 

53 Johnson does not include the play in his resume. See Bob Johnson Papers, University 
Arcives, University of Pittsburgh. August Wilson, interview by Lee Kiburi, 6 April 1999. 

 
 



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54 Vernell Lillie, interview by Lee Kiburi, 9 June 2007. 
55 Lillie’s education options were all in the North. Universities in the South did not admit 

black students, but Southern states provided scholarships for blacks to do graduate work in 
the North. Vernell Lillie, interview by Lee Kiburi, 9 June 2007 and 15 November 2007. 

56 Vernell Lillie, interview by the author, 9 June 2013. 
57 Vernell Lillie, interview by Lee Kiburi, 28 April 1998. 
58  Kuntu showcased the works of Rob Penny, who was the theater’s playwright-in-

residence. In 1975, Kuntu’s first year of operation, Lillie staged four of Penny’s works—Little 
Willie Armstrong Jones, Just Rob Penny (a collage), The Depths of Her Star, and Slow Lives on 
the Humdrum. The plays were staged at the University of Pittsburgh in the Stephen Foster 
Memorial Chapel, as well as in several community locations. Lillie CV, in Black Studies 
Department, 1978. 

59 Vernell Lillie, interview by Lee Kiburi, 28 April 1998. 
60 Ibid. 
61 Vernell Lillie, interview by the author, 7 and 9 June 2013. 
62 Vernell Lillie, interview by the author, 22 May 2014. 
63 Mary Bradley, interview by Lee Kiburi, 11 October 2011. 
64 The department had relocated from its original office on Craig Street to a suite of offices 

on the second floor of a building on Forbes Avenue, across from the old police and fire station. 
Brenda Berrian, interview by the author, 8 September 2013. 

65 Ibid. 
66 Diana Nelson Jones, “Obituary: Maisha Baton/Nurturing Poet, Playwright, Therapist 

and Teacher,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 28 March 2012. 
67 Vernell Lillie, interview by the author, 7 June 2013. 
68  Vernell Lillie to August Wilson, 26 January 1976, in the August Wilson papers, by 

courtesy of the August Wilson estate. 
69 Vernell Lillie, interview by the author, 15 November 2008; August Wilson, interview by 

Lee Kiburi, 6 April 1999; Vernell Lillie, interview by the author, 9 June 2013. 
70 Staged in 1976. Vernell Lillie, cv, 1978 
71  Marilyn Elkins, “Wilson, August,” in William L. Andrews, et al., eds., The Concise 

Oxford Companion to African American Literature, accessed 6 July 2015. Shannon, The 
Dramatic Vision of August Wilson, pp. 35ff has a summary of the play. 

72 Robert Uzzel, Blind Lemon Jefferson: His Life, His Death, and His Legacy (Austin, Tex.: 
Eakin Press, 2002), pp. 45-46. 

73 Joan Herrington, I Ain’t Sorry for Nothin’ I Done: August Wilson’s Process of Playwriting 
(New York: Limelight Press, 1998), p. 25. 

74  David Savran, “August Wilson,” in Jackson R. Bryer and Mary C. Hartig, eds., 
Conversations with August Wilson (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2006), p. 23. 

75 “The Homecoming,” by August Wilson. Courtesy of the August Wilson Estate. 
76 Lillie says she still has a copy of the play but declines to share it because of its relatively 

low quality. Sharing it, Lillie says, would be a disservice to August’s memory. Lillie, interview 
by the author, 7 June 2013, 9 June 2013. 

77 Vernell Lillie, interview by Lee Kiburi, 15 November 2008. 
78 Vernell Lillie, interview by Lee Kiburi, 28 April 1998. 
79 August Wilson, interview by Lee Kiburi, 6 April 1999. 
80 Rob Penny, interview by Lee Kiburi, 18 August 1998 
81 Vernell Lillie, interview by Lee Kiburi, 28 April 1998. 
82 Maisha Baton, interview by Lee Kiburi, 26 December 2007. 
 
 



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83 Ibid. 
84 Ibid.  
85 Ibid. 
86 Ibid. 
87 Ibid. 
88 Ibid.; C.V. in Bob Johnson Papers (Archives Service Center, University of Pittsburgh); 

Geri B. Ransom, “Theatre Urge Stages ‘Black Happenin’, “ New Pittsburgh Courier, 6 June 1981; 
A3. 

89 Ibid. 
90 Maisha Baton, interview by Lee Kiburi, 26 December 2007. 
91 Ibid. 
92 Ibid. 
93 August Wilson, interview by Lee Kiburi, 6 April 1999. 
94 Maisha Baton, interview by Lee Kiburi, 26 December 2007. 
95 Natalie Bazzell, interview by the author, 30 August 2013. 
96 Barbara Evans, interview by the author, 2 July 2018. 
97 Nelson Harrison, interview by the author, 26 July 2013.  
98 When August lived in Los Angeles, he may have seen the 1948 film that celebrated Bart’s 

exploits. See “’Black Bart’ Arrives,” by Philip K. Scheuer, Los Angeles Times, 25 February 1948: 
18. 

99 Wikipedia, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Bart_(outlaw), accessed 17 February 
2013. See also Frederick Nolan, The Wild West: History, Myth & the Making of America 
(London: Arcturus Publishing Limited, 2003), p. 133  

100 Rohan Preston, “Claude Purdy Gave August Wilson His Break in St. Paul (obituary), 
Minneapolis Star Tribune, 28 July 2009, online; Nelson Harrison, interview by the author, 26 
July 2013; Nelson Harrison email to the author, 25 March 2014. Macelle Mahala, Penumbra: 
The Premier Stage for African American Drama (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 
2013), p. 21 (hereafter cited as Mahala, Penumbra); Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, misc. items, Feb-
May 2017. 

101 Elva Branson, interview by the author, 8 May 2017. 
102 Years later, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette dated its demise as 1971. Ervin Dyer, “Obituary: 

Robert Lee ‘Rob’ Penny,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 18 March 2003. Curtiss Porter says Black 
Horizons ended “about 1972” (Curtiss Porter, interview by Lee Kiburi, 28 November 2007.) 

103  Rob Penny says it was still functioning “off and on” in 1973, when he and August 
established Ujima Theater. Rob Penny, interview by Lee Kiburi, 18 August 1998.  

104 Jet Magazine, 27 May 1976: 64. 
105 Mahala, Penumbra, p.27. 
106 Maisha Baton, interview by Lee Kiburi, 26 December 2007. 
107 Lee Kiburi, interview by the author, 31 July 2017. 
108 Bonnie Lyons, George Plimpton, “August Wilson, The Art of Theater,” Paris Review #14 

(Winter 1999), accessed on-line 12 January 2018. 
109 Maisha Baton, interview by Lee Kiburi, 26 December 2007. 
110 Ibid. 
111 Elva Branson, interview by the author, 8 May 2017. 
112 Maisha Baton, interview by Lee Kiburi, 26 December 2007. 
113  Script and comments for “Black Bart and the Sacred Hills.” in Bob Johnson papers, 

Archives Service Center, University of Pittsburgh. 
114 “Black Bart,” 125 MS, Box 28. Quoted courtesy of August Wilson estate. 
 
 



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115 Gifted intellectually as well as musically, Harrison went on to earn a Ph.D. in psychology 

and teach in the Music Department at the University of Pittsburgh. Today, he runs the 
Pittsburgh Jazz Society, dedicated to the promotion of jazz in Pittsburgh. The web site is at 
https://pittsburgh.jazznearyou.com/pittsburgh-jazz-society.php. 

116 August Wilson, interview by Lee Kiburi, 6 April 1999. 
117 Ron Pitts, interview by Lee Kiburi, 23 November 2007. 
118  Vernell Lillie, CV 1978. The play ran 23-26 June, 1977. (University of Pittsburgh) 

University Times, 16 June 1977. Also Vernell Lillie, CV, Black Studies Department. 
119 August Wilson, interview by Lee Kiburi, 6 April 1999. 
120 Ron Pitts, interview by Lee Kiburi, 23 November 2007. 
121 Ibid. 
122  Justin Maxwell, “August Wilson and the Playwrights’ Center,” Minnesota History, 

(Winter 2006-07): 133-142; Rohan Preston, “Claude Purdy Gave August Wilson His Break in 
St. Paul,” (Minneapolis) Star Tribune, 28 July 2009, accessed online. Purdy later became an 
expert interpreter of Wilson plays, directing them in such cities as Pittsburgh, Houston, San 
Francisco and London. 

123  David Savran, “August Wilson,” in Jackson R. Bryer and Mary C. Hartig, eds., 
Conversations with August Wilson (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2006), p. 22. 

124 Thad Mosley, interview, 30 April 2013. 
125 In fact, the Guthrie would not have been a good fit for August. The theater was self-

consciously interested only in established playwrights with outstanding national and/or 
international, reputations. Only after August established himself as a major American 
playwright did the Guthrie stage his plays. See Daniel Gabriel, interview, 31 July 2014.  

126 Elva Branson, interview, 8 May 2017. Jacqui Shoholm, Purdy’s widow, says August came 
with the intention of working with Claude in St. Paul. Jacqui Shoholm, interview, 25 August 
2017. 

127 Thad Mosley, interview by the author, 30 April 2013. 
128 Thad Mosley, interview by the author, 23 May 2014. 
129 Date per Jacqui Shoholm, widow of Claude Purdy. 
130 Maisha Baton, interview by Lee Kiburi, 26 December 2007. 
131 Ibid. 
132 Ibid. 
133 Ron Pitts, interview by Lee Kiburi, 23 November 2007. 
134 Sala Udin, interview by the author, 7 June 2013. 
135 Ralph Proctor, interview by the author, 24 June 2013. 
136 Shannon, The Dramatic Vision of August Wilson, p. 26. 
137 Christopher Rawson, “The Power Behind the Plays: August Wilson Has Changed the 

Way Theater Approaches Race,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 6 June 1999. 
138 August Wilson, “Feed Your Mind, the Rest Will Follow,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 28 

March 1999; Elaine Effort, “Pittsburgh Profiles,” KQV radio, 25 September 1987. 
139 Christopher Rawson, “August Wilson, Pittsburgh Playwright Who Chronicled Black 

Experience,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 3 October 2005. 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 



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Author Bio 

Dr. Laurence Glasco is Associate Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh, where 
he teaches courses in race, ethnicity, and urban history.   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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	Chapter IX: "I Can't Take It!":  August Wilson Leaves Pittsburgh
	Abstract
	Keywords


