“I been across the water. I seen both sides of it. I know about the water. The water has its secrets the way the land has its secrets. Some know about the land. Some know about the water. But there is some that know about the land and the water. They got both sides of it.”

Aunt Ester, a 285-year-old former slave and one of my favorite Wilson characters, is talking to Citizen Barlow, a recent migrant from Alabama. She wants to take Citizen on a spiritual trip to the City of Bones, an underwater city in the Atlantic Ocean constructed from the bones of slaves who perished during the Middle Passage. This dialogue is classic Wilson — creative and relevant, yet emotionally captivating.

“I been across the water,” she starts before taking him on the journey.

If I wanted to capture the playwright’s childhood, it would require some digging. Much of what Wilson would have seen as a child there had been supplanted. Even the building that he would have gone to every day, Holy Trinity School, no longer existed.

But memories of Wilson and his time there endure. Sala Udin, who recently won a primary election for a seat on the city’s school board, attended school with him in the early 1950s. Mr. Udin recalled that when the other children would play games, Freddy was usually off to the side, writing.

Holy Trinity, his first school, was demolished later that decade as construction of the Civic Arena encroached on the lower Hill District, just a stone’s throw from downtown. Eminent domain was enforced and by 1958 roughly 8,000 mostly African-American residents had been displaced, including Mr. Udin and his immediate family.