September 20, 2011
Speaker: SALA UDIN, Former Pittsburgh City Councilman
About the speaker: (from wikipedia) Sala Udin, August Wilson, and Rob Penny co-founded the Centre Avenue Poets’ Theatre Workshop in the Hill District, Pittsburgh in 1965. Along with this workshop, the three men also co-founded the Black Horizon Theater in 1968. Sala Udin also opened a Black bookstore called New World Books in 1992.
Udin’s major theatrical work is that when he starred as Becker in the August Wilson play Jitney in October 1982 at the Allegheny Repertory Theatre.
Sala Udin spent 11 years as a Pittsburgh City Councilman beginning in 1997 when he was elected to finish out the term of late Councilman Christopher Smith who represented District 6. While serving as a City Councilman, Udin was one of the officials involved with a referendum petition to the City Charter which would result in the development of a Citizen Police Review Board.
Sala Udin is currently the president and CEO of the Coro Center for Civic Leadership’s Pittsburgh chapter. Coro is a national, non-profit, non-partisan educational organization supported by foundations, corporations, and individuals.
In addition to his work with Coro, Sala Udin helped to found the August Wilson Center for African American Culture. The August Wilson Center “engages regional and national audiences in its mission of preserving, presenting, interpreting, celebrating, and shaping the art, culture, and history of African Americans in Western Pennsylvania and people of African American descent throughout the world.”
Squirrel Hill Historical Society 