August Wilson’s plays show his ability to draw upon and transcend the turbulent years he spent at his now-famous Hill District address at 1827 Bedford Avenue. With the benefit of time and distance, Wilson wrote a series of compelling dramas that speak not just to the tensions within a single Black family but also to conditions faced by the Black masses still impacted by the trauma of slavery and the effects of cultural fragmentation. We thus see in Wilson’s series of symbolic and sometimes clearly allegorical characters evidence of an overarching narrative about the counterbalances between forces that set Black families asunder and the resilience that reunites and bonds them together. This chapter explores the ways Wilson’s plays demand that we regard “family” in both literal and figurative terms through an analysis of the Black family portraits on display in them.

August Wilson once suggested that African Americans leaving the US South during the Great Migration was one of the worst things that happened to the community. Because the Great Migration and the chronicle of African and African American migrants’ histories/herstories are intertwined discussions, this chapter suggests that the American Century Cycle enables Wilson to design a culturally specific study of the affects and effects of the migration on the characters and geographic spaces he plots. It considers how Wilson uses the plays in the cycle to demonstrate his point while also providing hope that, even within the urban North, the realities of the South and transformation of Southern mores will not be forgotten or ignored.

This chapter explores the complex representations of the Black middle class in August Wilson’s American Century Cycle, with particular attention given to Radio Golf. After providing contextual material on the Black middle class in culture and literature, it examines the importance of Harmond Wilks, the real estate developer and aspiring politician at the center of the play who eventually rejects conventional notions of Black aspiration and uplift for African values of community, family, and cultural origins. The chapter demonstrates how Wilks’s trajectory from being a son of privilege to becoming a community rebel highlights Wilson’s evolving views about the potential of the Black elite and the need for their participation to change the world for Black Americans.