[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 128 (Wednesday, October 5, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Page S11124]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        TRIBUTE TO AUGUST WILSON

   Mr. COLEMAN. Mr. President, I want to pause in the Senate's 
business today to recognize the passing of a great American who we in 
Minnesota are proud to call our own: Pulitzer Prize winning poet and 
playwright August Wilson. He died yesterday at the age of 60.
  August Wilson spent a good part of his adult life in Saint Paul, MN, 
which is my home. He worked for a time at the Science Museum of 
Minnesota, writing educational scripts. As his work became recognized 
and his fame spread, he continued to be seen around Saint Paul, working 
in coffee shops and other such places, sketching out ideas on the backs 
of napkins.
  In his many plays, Mr. Wilson brought his audiences back time and 
again to the neighborhood where he grew up, in the Hill District of 
Pittsburgh, PA. Through a series of 10 plays, he traced the African-
American experience through the ten decades of the 20th century. The 
first, ``Jitney,'' about a city taxi station, was written in Saint 
Paul.
  Decades ago, the poet T.S. Elliot wrote that, ``Poetry is not an 
assertion of the truth, but making that truth more fully real to us.'' 
America struggles with deep divisions on matters of race. The tragic 
events in the gulf coast have brought that home to us. How desperately 
we need the kind of expression of the truth that August Wilson brought 
to a large audience.
  Facts are important, but we have all experienced the frustration of 
not seeing our set of facts ``carry the day.'' Psychologists have even 
determined that we use one part of our brain to process the ideas of 
political candidates we support and a different part of our brain when 
we are listening to the views of one we don't. Jerry Garcia of the 
Grateful Dead wrote a line I like: ``People ain't gonna learn what they 
don't wanna know.''
  But we hold out the hope the art can find a way through our defenses 
and make truth fully real to us. When Abraham Lincoln met Harriet 
Beecher Stowe, author of ``Uncle Tom's Cabin,'' legend has it that he 
said, ``So this is the little woman who started this big war.''
  It is a special honor that August Wilson will have a theater on New 
York's Broadway named in his honor. The Minnesota connection in that is 
the theater has previously born the name of Virginia Binger, the late 
wife of Jim Binger, one of Minnesota's great citizens. The eight Wilson 
plays that made it to Broadway were nominated for more than 50 Tony 
awards.
  Talking about the blues in a way that could just as well have been 
applied to his own writing, he said: ``You don't sing to feel better. 
You sing `cause that's a way of understanding life.''
  We recognize the history and forces which shaped the life of August 
Wilson and we honor his life long effort to make the truth 
real.

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