BIGSBY You were born in Pittsburgh in 1945. What sort of world were you brought up in?

WILSON Actually I lived in a mixed neighbourhood. There were, as I recall, quite a few Syrians, Jews, Italians and blacks, all mixed together. It was very interesting.

BIGSBY Does that mean that you were insulated from segregation?

WILSON It doesn't mean that at all because one encounters that early on. I suspect that from the time one is about seven or eight one begins to notice that all the people who are in positions of authority, whether it is the owner of the grocery store, the landlord, the teachers at the school, the bus drivers, or the people downtown in the shops and stores, all these people are white. So one begins to notice that early on, even though one may not quite understand it. So you are isolated.

BIGSBYLooking back, can you recall what it was like as a child, slowly becoming aware of this process?

WILSON I suspect my first raw encounter with racism was when I was fourteen. Every day when I went to school there was a note on my desk saying, 'Go home, nigger'. That was my first encounter with both individual and institutional racism.