Bell Zonia Cutler Wilson was born in 1894 in Spear, North Carolina, to Jacob and Sarah Eller Twitty Cutler. Her mother, called Eller, was a respected midwife and healer in their small Appalachian mountain community. The family owned a substantial plot of land; in fact, Zonia’s father was the only Black landowner in the area. Today a scenic nature spot known as Cutler Falls still bears the family name.
Though by all accounts her family was a loving one, Zonia’s childhood was not easy. Scraping together a living in the isolated mountains was a constant challenge, and racial discrimination placed an additional burden on families like the Cutlers. During the years of World War I, many men in the community left for military service or work in the area’s mines, leaving women like Zonia to sustain the household.
Her young adult life was further marred by sexual violence and wrongful imprisonment, the latter possibly part of an effort to seize her family’s land. For a time she worked as a domestic servant in the household of local politician T.D. Vance. By 1922, Zonia was a mother of three children - named Faye, Daisy, and Detroit (who went by Ray) - facing the usual challenges of parenting amidst the strains of racism and economic hardship.
Her life would begin a new chapter in 1928, when Zonia met and married a talented musician from Tennessee named Bynam Wilson. The couple soon moved to Bramwell, West Virginia, where Bynam found work. Sadly, while living there in August 1930, the couple lost a baby boy who died shortly after birth. A few years later in 1932, as part of the larger exodus of Black people out of the American South known as the “Great Migration,” Bynam and Zonia moved north to Pittsburgh, settling in the Hill District.
All of Zonia's children adopted the Wilson surname, and she embraced her role as a housewife in their residence on Logan Street. There she raised three more sons, named John, Franklin, and George. The family thrived in their community, with Zonia especially enjoying attending movies at the nearby Rhumba Theater, where her sons worked
It was in the Hill in 1945 that Zonia's daughter, Daisy, gave birth to a boy she named Frederick August Kittel, Jr., after his father. By that time, Zonia had come to reside across the street from Daisy on Bedford Avenue, at the home of professional boxer Charlie Burley and his wife Julia.
At the age of 20, young Frederick Kittel, Jr. would change his name to August Wilson - the name under which he later became one of America’s most celebrated playwrights. Though Zonia died when he was only five years old, August Wilson often recounted tales of his grandmother’s journey northward, and drew upon her memory as a link to the family’s Southern past. He paid tribute to her through the character of 11-year old Zonia Loomis in Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, a play focused on themes of migration to the North and the Black struggle for freedom.
Zonia Cutler Wilson's life came to a close in March 1950 at Charlie Burley's house on Bedford Avenue. She was buried in Greenwood Cemetery north of the city. August Wilson, along with his sisters Freda and Linda Jean, paid for a headstone remembering her as “Grandma” - a final act of honor to mark her resting place for those coming after.
It is not an overstatement to say that without Zonia’s courage, resilience, and determination to seek a better life, the world may never have known the creative works of August Wilson that have given so many an understanding of the Black experience in America.
