A Salute to Two Famous Pittsburghers for Black History Month

Two Pittsburghers brought the 20^th century African American experience to life through photographs and written works.

Teenie Harris
With an eighth-grade education and mostly self-taught, Charles “Teenie” Harris, a photojournalist, opened his own studio in the Hill District and produced portraits of African American celebrities and ordinary people before joining the staff at the Pittsburgh Courier, where he worked from 1941 to 1975, producing some 80,000 images.

Teenie died in 1998 at the age of 89. In September 2024, he was honored with a state historical marker outside the house in Homewood where he lived for decades and developed his photos in the basement. His vast portfolio is housed in a permanent collection at the Carnegie Museum of Art.

August Wilson
Known as the “theater’s poet of Black America,” playwright August Wilson (Frederick August Kittel Jr.) is best known for a series of ten plays, collectively called The Pittsburgh Cycle, which chronicled the experiences of the African American community in Pittsburgh. Born in 1945 in the Hill District, he dropped out of school at age 15 and turn to writing poetry and theater plays detailing the African American experience.

He became one of the most important voices in modern theater and won two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama, two Tony Awards, two Drama Desk Awards, and eight New York Drama Critics’ Circle Awards.

August died in 2005. On January 7, 2025, he received a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. The August Wilson African American Cultural Center in downtown Pittsburgh has a permanent exhibit, The Writer’s Landscape, the first ever exhibition dedicated to the life and works of August Wilson.