There are constant assaults on our sense of ourselves, our work, our history and our very presence, August Wilson tells us, not only in the field of art, but also on the taxing terrain of daily life. He defined us as a people in a long historical process of freeing, reassembling and repairing ourselves and forging a new future of creativity and prosperity. So, all “assaults . . . that demean and ridicule and depress the value and worth of our existence, that seek to render it immobile and to extinguish the flame of freedom lit eons ago by our ancestors upon another continent, must be met with a fierce and uncompromising defense.” Indeed, he says, “If you are willing to accept it, it is your duty to affirm and urge that defense, and that respect and that self-determination.”