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Understanding 9/11tv August Wilson CSPAN August 24, 2017 5:52am-6:08am EDT
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notice but i fake it is a great example of alerting would have that conversation and civil rights was impacted by the way that it was framed it with that sole rights movement with the work of charles used in. >> we are prime time during this congressional recess and we're showing stops on our cities to work -- [inaudible] >> i went out into the
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community the used to be a thriving community that there were shops all along the avenue. >> with discrimination with those darker skinned students they call him cracker and a day, flying up the street. so one day their mother said don't close the gate let them come with this big payload bader i don't know how she did this and tells them with a big bucket of water and said the the kids alone but that was part of the dynamics of the
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integrated neighborhood not really of of racial tensions this iconic pittsburg figure but they really have a pittsburgh games whether urban redevelopment order drugs or urban renewal so they really capture an important part so wilson had a real sense of place rocking mistreats on the hill district didn't have a licence or like driving he was a person who walked. he can walk for miles. watching the guys on the
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corner when the of barbershop into the pool halls and robert from them and could pat -- capture the atmosphere he like to work their routes he was writing he was listening at the same time with this guy alien the field so they have the idea with a life on and off the street is some type of obscure location of everyday life and every day people and he wanted people to be aware that art and life exists there and they always we can learn from that people drive right by don't pay attention that our ordinary or weird to look
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away from but it is multiracial and multi-ethnic and people got along and cared for one another it was a neighborhood you did not have to lock your doors. and with very little retail at all. and with that lower middle-class sort of life. said he had a very comfortable childhood in that regard to and he talks about how well the neighbors
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get along. bay he did not experience prejudiced and reaches the hill district it as he grew up here it was a comfortable and nurturing sort of environment. also very creative. the house that they lived in was very rundown and the kids all slept in the room together. they share the bed he would always get next to the wall and pick the chips off then make stories of the figures emerged from the paint missing. so he was always thinking creatively even as a kid. so this is a wilson house
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and just have the bottom two rooms and that is where they had five people dead in the '50s the family that lived above them and when they moved of 1962 that expanded their living space. so that meant so much to him . and his father did not live here. he had another family coming
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year after work. so they were candidates so in the morning he would come but the time he got here at 9:00 in the morning the kids or enough for school and already luckier so they dead not really bond for that reason. one reason he had trouble identifying and bonding is that is what there was an alcoholic. but he had a real of streaking problem. so he very seldom drank himself he smoked like a smokestack but he did it hit the bottle at all socially
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with the relationship was searle here is a substitute father was his neighbor that lived across the street brought him named charlie as a prizefighter. so august idolized charlie in the almost adopted to masses undergo and his wife julia and august mother was best friends and there were a lot of ties between the two. and she had that warrior spirit. somebody who stands up not so much as aggressive and hostile aisle because charlie was not. he could take a punch. he said you don't let it get
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you down you get back up. he is angry he did not get to play major-league baseball. he should of been though world gnp but never got the fight that he needed. it was too early for the black man. he never got the break that he should have. it is my job. a man has to take care of his family. to fill your belly with my food. because as you are my flesh and blood.
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>> that is what a warrior does. said charlie was a very important part of august development in the neighbor's a few doors down from where he grew up is called the warrior spirit. the place that made him famous he lived in st. paul minnesota alleges is ironic because the channel both places -- those voices he said it took moving not of the city to really hear of the places you're surrounded by them you read to close. just like your heart be. he left its forget 32 moving to st. paul and got home sec
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and started to think back to a the voice is a of the people he had known and to adjust channel those in those ways and pittsburgh plays and poetry were abstract, complex in the modernistic trend and opaque and did not capture the language of the people but he knew the language. he felt he needed to do elevated to bring more honor and dignity to newspeople. in debt was the city's oldest neighborhood right next to downtown.
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it was old and a large and that makes the difference in terms of race relations that somebody is coming into our space from the very beginning that blacks were always year and immigrants are zero ways here. but there were other jewish families and there were jews and blacks that live in
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there and they said the polar like the history chicago or washington there were very early race riots. and in most places they did not have that. and they show that things can be different than historians will the newspapers don't look at a but if there is the of great gore right in the neck gets the attention. then you generalize. so this is a neighborhood where people did get along together to get out to sea
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life and pay attention august realized life is complex. it isn't just simplistic things where you know, the answer of the good guys and a the bad guys people have conflicting feelings and he was able to capture that because he thought what he observed and was honest about it. and with black america of there was a variety. not just wonder the other bed different opinions. all sorts of arguments where people go back and forth in realize we're not a simple people. and that is why he is such a compelling playwright.
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. >> we are a step away from the thomas edison museum. to learn more about the city's literary scene with a story and to learn about the role played in the region. and the impetus for up to that point there had not been a great deal written on it especially when it comes to the interaction of the different railroads and communities but if you look
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