Before. But there is going to be some stuff im going to talk about in a little bit more depth than we talked about last class on thursday you guys are going to read the next and im going to give you a pop quiz we will take a see you guys can get a great for it. And you have a pop quiz for tbone and weasel lets start with August Wilson. August wilson was born frederik patel. In 1945 his mothers name was daisy wilson shows a cleaning lady his father was a german baker. Race matters in a specific way race is always something that were discussing what we look at these plays his father was a german baker so he is white. He is european and his mother is a black woman named daisy and she is a cleaning lady i want you to understand we are already talking about a mixed relationship and this is a part of what hes working on how he is negotiating African American exist and its a part of who and what he is as hes working its part of the mission he is undertaking he is the fourth of six children and they live in the hill district of pennsylvania a lot of what wilson is going to talk about deals with the great migration great migration i mentioned that in this class before. The great migration is what happened after reconstruction in the south. When the social status of black people moved from slavery to freed to the reconstruction era to sharecropping. It was this new name i dont get is accurate for me to say slavery but that is essentially what it becomes. It is just a system where the black people used to be the slaves on the plantation, they are in a position where they are renting what used to be the slave cabins. They are renting clothes. They are renting the tools to go work for the same forms on which they were enslaved. They are never able to actually pay for the rental fees for the things they are using. That is one of the motivating factors that caused a number of blacks to move northward at the turn of the century and pursue a better life in the north. I want you to think for a couple minutes about what that does or what that means for black families in the south. More often than not it was the man who would gore north or the eldest son. The purpose was to make money they could send home. That is always the goal. You will find a number of people in pittsburgh, new york, chicago who have come north looking to make a fortune so they can either make enough money so their family can come to the north or so they can send money home so their people could have a way of living. Understand that one of the things wilson is talking about, one of the things that informs it is the great migration. In pittsburgh, because these rural areas are now dealing with an influx of black people, there are racial tensions that get built afterwards. It includes white neighborhoods in which black presences hadnt been before. There hadnt been a growing port black populations that need things to live. They need jobs, food, shelter. It is colder in south pittsburgh than in South Carolina or georgia. They are like how do we live . How do we feed ourselves . These become the primary concerns. Understand that all of those things are what are informing census when we finally get to it. At the age of 15 he dropped out of high school and joined the army in 1962 four three years. I cant give you the real percentages, i would be making stuff up and lying to you. I believe there is a higher percentage of black people in our current military then other races. What are some of the motivating factors for joining the military . What does it give you . Dont a lot of Army Recruiters go to poor black neighborhoods to recruit and push the education opportunity and using that . They wouldnt do it with rich white kids. Have to deal with so the Armed Services was one of the things it with black families away from each other. It wasnt a cruel way, they were offered this opportunity, they said hey heres an opportunity for you to get free three meals a day, place to sleep training education, and you can send a check home to your family. That is one of the opportunities for employment and advancement, that happened during when wilson but when he was 18 years old, hes in the army for three years after he leaves the army in the late 1960s he comes back to the pittsburgh area, and he joins a group of artists, and they join the center avenue poets, which layer leader he will cofounder the black horizon feeder. Which is a Theater Company a black Theater Company in pennsylvania. So, he stays in pittsburgh until i think 1974 1975, then he goes westward, spent a few years in chicago, then he moves in 1978 to minnesota. And he will concentrate on playwriting in minnesota. He joins us either group there, the artistic director for that is lou billowy. It is black owned, black oriented, and black centered Theater Company minnesota. Why is the name in minnesota i cant think of it right now, minneapolis, that was it that would be the place and win in minnesota minneapolis. So its in minneapolis minnesota. And he is working with blue bologna. And August Wilson gets to a point in his life, where what he is writing about is the lives of black people. I want you to think for a couple minutes, of why that is happening. Why is it significant, and is in what way is it significant. That his writing hes writing about the lives of black people. Weve talked about this before about the shift between white artists writing black voices, what does it mean when a white playwright writes a black character. What is their voice sound like, is it authentic, what is the characters purpose. The black characters who are appearing in white movies become a thing. We will jump a little bit to talk about Popular Culture, that is influencing the way August Wilson is thinking about plays, and writing and the presentation of black people. Just gonna jump for a couple seconds. I want to ask for a second about the Popular Culture of the 19 eighties, the 19 eighties one of the things that are informing and im talking about the 19 eighties because, August Wilson will talk about where were gonna talk about fences, but we will talk about the things that were informing the way wilson was thinking about the world. So in the mid in the beginning to 1980 1986 what was a popular images that are influencing what wilson seeing. You have the movies include ete, raiders of the lost ark, everly hills klopp, pretty in pink, breakfast club, some kind of wonderful, Beverly Hills cop are you at all. Familiar with these series of movies, have you heard them before . If you think about things like the breakfast club, pretty in pink, i think john hughes is the person who wrote it, hes making a genre of movies. We talk about what ideology means, and it is those unspoken and sometimes less clear structures that influence the way people think about america away people should behave the way women should behave. What it means to be straight what it means to be a. What it means to be a whole lot of things. Nobody says its at right but, it is unspoken underlying structures. That informs the way we think about race and identity in class and gender. Does that make sense . So if youve got movies like pretty in pink and some kind of wonderful, i think theres a movie with john cusack holding up a boom box, i fidelity maybe have not sure what it is, but you have all of these as the biggest movie sitter coming out in the eighties, and the primary concern of these movies i think this is the im not a simple talk cinematographer a, cant tell you everything but white women, white men falling in love those or what a lot of the stories are about. Overcoming obstacles, rejection. Most of our movies in the eighties, are dealing with white folks falling in love. Think for a couple seconds, about how we people of color, African American people, appear in those films. Give it just a little bit of consideration. We are more often than not, marginal. Or tangential, we are someone else in that story. So we finally make it to August Wilson, we havent instance where we have things that are motivating August Wilson is his desire to move black people from the margins to the center. And say what is true about us. What managed to us, what is happening in our lives. Because when we are on the margins what we have to say, its not may be part of the main story, so becomes caricature where we are saying the funny lines. Prior to this we have george jefferson, who we as a marginal character ins not called the archie bunker show but it was archie bunker. And then we have good times like people showing up in comedy black people lives in culture her in pop culture for very long time with something you left at, not left with but left at, we were the joke we were the comedy think about 80 murphy, i dont know if any of you have ever read his early comedy, but think about what that is rooted on it is different. Black comedians, black people creating black Company Comedy for black people its a different experience. Then black people shown in white structures and being something to be left at. I want you guys to think about how that works. In television you have rosen, married with children, mtv, believe it or not at one point in time, Music Television began with music. Video killed the radio star, i think it was 86 or somewhere around there, i was a high school student, and we all know youre looking at new vacant expressions, thes first song that ever played on mtv, and it was video killed the radio star. I know that was the song. And Michael Jacksons thriller. Think about Michael Jackson 1980s. This is how black people are represented in art. Becomes a thought that people are doing on purpose what happened black artists black songwriters like performers, im not saying that they are embracing black identity but they are becoming critical and critically analyzing black identity even though its a way of exploiting the 1970s film in response to this Civil Rights Movement of 1960s, we have to look at things in relationship to each other. We look at the Civil Rights Movement what happened then we can look at the 19 fifties, again look at emma tills mother and who kept his casket open that was an act of performance. She was like this will not happen behind closed doors anymore. Think about private voice versus public voice, what does it mean when we are forced to keep something in private as opposed to what happens when we make it public think about development and technologies that happen between the 19 fifties in the 19 eighties think about the advancement we made in telephone the advancement we get in recording technologies think about the advancement weve made in film in film and television itself. That should make sense to guys now there are videos every time something happens out there if someone meet you in the Grocery Store parking lot they start acting funny towards you, whats the first thing that happens. What is the first thing that happens, if you are in a public space, and something you think things are gonna go bad. Thats not rhetorical question. You can leave yes. Somebody pulls out a phone and Start Recording it. We have all of these instances right now of things that used to happen without any evidence but now there is evidence theres evidence not only from street cameras but every individual everyone in this room has their own form they have a way of documenting their existence and how these crazy things happen to us. That is what African American existence becomes for a while. We say for the public we see to the public you are treating us in this way, and often time what comes back, these people are saying it cant be that bad. You are exaggerating. Well now, we get to the point where a phone comes to more like, not exaggerating this is whats happening. And so what happened subsequently is this weird justification. But i have to understand the context for that right. That was taken out of context. No it wasnt taken out of context. So we get back to August Wilson, in the 19 eighties the things that we are informing his artistic vision as a writer, and all those pop culture references, he is seeing whats informing his television and movie habits, that is a white peoples thats the white peoples world. Who is writing about us . And if the writing about what are they saying . That is what is driving him as a playwright. Good so lets talk about briefly im going to go through the 1980s. A lot of this, its tough that i was alive for. Perhaps a different relationship i had to this, i was realizing lipid disappeareds morning, youre gonna look a lot of this and what about to say stuff that only ever existed in a history book, but i was in high school, from essentially here on. Right so everything im talking about, are things that i have a memory of, havent having happened while i was in high school. I was a little bit of a memory of this. On october 10th 1980, jimmy carter signed legislation establishing a boston African American historic site, the Oldest Black Church in america. And that happened in the 19 eighties it was on the news. January 20 1981, inauguration of Ronald Reagan as the 14th president of united states. This matters, im not an economics professor, but reagan all max is something you can look up, and look at how it affected the world. One of the things the most important part about that will talk about later, its a tax cut in which we went from i think a 70 tax rate theres a way to say they dont know what it is but, 70 tax rate that gets dropped to 37 and 35 , from the wealthiest people in the country. Over the course of five years. We lose as a country 750 million billion sorry billion over five years, we as a country lose 750 billion dollars in tax revenue. Based on something, based on this bill that was signed by Ronald Reagan. March 30th 1981, someone tried to kill Ronald Reagan. Everybody knew about it i just talk about things it showed up on the news for days. April 12th 1981, watch first launch of the Space Shuttle and keep narrow. General 29th reagans tax cut cost america 750 billion dollars of next five years. September 12th 1981, sandra day oconnor, becomes the first female justice, of the supreme court. These are big stories that we couldnt not see. Im absolutely positive on some level, the stories impacted or were in the awareness of August Wilson. I dont even want to say it necessarily impacted everyone, but as you think about the themes in fences, and we move from the deeply personal to the public, i want you to think about the way the public is becoming aware, because of the way that the public is growing awareness, of the world. Of the nation of the national identity. March section march 2nd 1982, they illuminate busing, was races was racism fixed in 1982 . No i dont think it was. Busing was born as a way i think, it was built as a way to integrate black sunlight it had to do the quality well you know what do we know from that history. A couple of classes ago the one black young woman who had to go to school in mississippi, and the 5000 people who went to mississippi just so she could go to school, that would have been, 1954, 55, 90 50 4 55 all these things are related to each other. Black people being allowed to go to white institutions, being allowed to. And we in this room have to think very specifically about what that means for us. We look at the racial demographics we have to consider always consider what that means to us. We a part of this history. September 20th 1984, the cosby show premieres. Weve talked about that in this room, cosby shows one of the first times we have representation of a black doctor, blackmail doctor, married to a black female lawyer and they have five kids, who are all successful, unprofessional and living life in a way that is not abject poverty, that is not just a joke. That is not in constant pain. Things that concern the cosby family you have to consider what their primary concerns are, we can think about vanessa who is looking for a boyfriend, very smart it became layered, it became what black people are with something new because of the cosby show 1985 bob gilder raises money for relief in ethiopia he does a giant concert 1986 firsttime january 20th 1986, Martin Luther king the holiday is officially recognize for the first time. January 28th 1986, the challenger Space Shuttle explodes. Killing seven astronauts. Its one of those things, i am 50 years old now, and i can remember where was when this happened. I was in high school, this is my senior year of high school. How old are you guys do you have a memory of 2011. Of what happened to the world on september 11th 2001. Do you guys remember that . Do you have images of the tower falling in your head . Just a generational thing, there are several several things that happen in our country in the world, that we as people, we have images fit to us on television. One of those for me was the explosion of the challenger Space Shuttle. We watched it launch, and then moments later we watched explode. We watched seven astronauts disintegrate. We watched it as a nation. In 2001 september 11th we watched airplanes hit the twin towers in new york and we watched in realtime towers fall on fire we watched it happen i find interesting as a group of people you are too young to have a memory of where you were at the time. Then may 25th 1986 hands across america the eighties were special time but you guys should have a reference for hands across america as of last week. Was your reference to that . It is jordan peels. Good. I want you to think of the things have Global Impact so this is the world that is informing August Wilson as he is writing the play fences. One more thing to talk about and then were going to discus