The Piano Lesson

James Truslow Adams coined the phrase “American Dream” in 1931 to describe the ethos of the country as promised and shaped by its founding documents. The Dream, which is at the core of American exceptionalism, promises that “each man and woman shall be able to attain the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position” (Wills, Matthew. “James Truslow Adams: Dreaming up the American Dream.” JSTOR Daily, 2015). And of all possible signifiers of this “fullest stature,” the most sought-after manifestation of the American Dream was home and land ownership. But Black Americans have been systematically excluded from equal pursuit of the American Dream, a theme that resurfaces over and over in August Wilson’s Century Cycle. When slavery was abolished by the 13th amendment in 1865, newly freed Black Americans not only had little or nothing materially, but generations of enslavement had severed and distanced them from their familial inheritances and cultural roots. Attempts by Black Americans to pursue the American Dream were riddled with barriers and traps that would land them in the penal system, which was the new iteration of legal slavery.