Personal Life
Sala Udin was born Samuel Wesley Howze to William and Mary Howze. He was born on February 20, 1943, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is one of eleven children and was raised in the Hill District in Pittsburgh. During the urban renewal stages the Hill District suffered, the Howze family was forced out of their home on Fullterton Street and placed into public housing. Upon graduating in 1961 from Port Richmond High School in Staten Island, New York, Udin joined the Freedom Rider movement that same summer.
Udin also served for three years as the president of the Staten Island chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. In 1964, Udin registered voters in Holmes County, Mississippi, for the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project. In 1965, Sala Udin, August Wilson, and Rob Penny co-founded the Centre Avenue Poets' Theatre Workshop in the Hill District, Pittsburgh. 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 also had a son murdered in 2005 due to street violence.
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