Twenty years ago, I entered Seattle Repertory Theatre and watched one of the greatest poets of the 20th century, August Wilson, walk onto a stage, hang his cap and coat on a hanger, sit on a comfortable armchair, and perform his one-man play How I Learned What I Learned. The audience was mesmerized by his presence and presentation, which in my mind was similar to how Mister Rogers welcomes viewers to the "beautiful day in [his] neighborhood." Wilson's neighborhood, however, was the Hill District, the part of Pittsburg that became Black in the 1920s. Here, we learned, is where, with the help of local artists and the library, Wilson discovered the poet in him. A few weeks ago, I entered Seattle Rep and watched Steven Anthony Jones perform How I Learned What I Learned. Though this version was less intimate than Wilson's, it convincingly emphasized the part of the play that concerned the young artist's repeated and soul-challenging encounters with American racism. Jones' moral outrage is much more forceful and objective than Wilson's. And this makes perfect sense when one considers our increasingly "anti-woke" (meaning, anti-Black) times. Even the richest man in the world doesn't try to hide his racism. We are not going forward but backward in time, back to the days when the last thing America wanted was woke Blacks like Wilson. Do not miss this play.