The late playwright August Wilson had some pointed opinions about the statue of St. Benedict the Moor mounted atop a church in Pittsburgh’s Lower Hill District. In 1968, a crane hoisted the 18-foot statue onto the church located at the gateway to the Hill District at an intersection long known as “Freedom Corner.”

Wilson told interviewer Dinah Livingston in 1987:

… all the white people are gone, so it’s all Black. And they name the church Old Holy Trinity St. Bridget St. Benedict the Moor. After much discussion about the matter, they decided to just name it St. Benedict the Moor. And they put up this stature of St. Benedict. The church sits on the dividing line between the downtown and the Hill District—and they had the statue with its back turned to the Blacks and its arms opened to the downtown. Every single person in the neighborhood … noticed that and felt insulted that we got a Black saint and he’s turned his back on us and opened his arms up to the white folks downtown.

Livingston, Dinah. “Cool August: Mr. Wilson’s Red Hot Blues.” In Conversations with August Wilson, edited by Jackson R. Bryer and Mary C. Hartig, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2006, p. 46

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