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Lorraine Vivian Hansberry (May 19, 1930 – January 12, 1965) was an American playwright and writer. [1] She was the first African-American female author to have a play performed on Broadway . Her best-known work, the play A Raisin in the Sun , highlights the lives of black Americans in Chicago living under racial segregation .
- Early Life
- Education
- Marriage
- 'A Raisin in The Sun'
- Later Work
- Death
- Legacy
- Sources
The granddaughter of a formerly enslaved person, Lorraine Hansberry was born into a family that was active in the Black community of Chicago. She was raised in an atmosphere suffused with activism and intellectual rigor. Her uncle William Leo Hansberry was a professor of African history. Visitors to her childhood home included such Black luminaries...
Lorraine Hansberry attended the University of Wisconsin for two years and she briefly attended the Art Institute in Chicago, where she studied painting. Desiring to pursue her longtime interest in writing and theater, she then moved to New York to attend the New School for Social Research. She also began work for Paul Robeson's progressive Black ne...
Hansberry met Jewish publisher and activist Robert Nemiroff on a picket line and they were married in 1953, spending the night before their wedding protesting the execution of the Rosenbergs. With support from her husband, Lorraine Hansberry left her position at Freedom, focusing mostly on her writing and taking a few temporary jobs. She soon joine...
Lorraine Hansberry completed her first play in 1957, taking her title from Langston Hughes' poem, "Harlem." "A Raisin in the Sun" is about a struggling Black family in Chicago and draws heavily from the lives of the working-class tenants who rented from her father. There are strong influences from her own family on the characters as well. “Beneatha...
Lorraine Hansberry was commissioned to write a television drama on the system of enslavement, which she completed as "The Drinking Gourd," but it was not produced. Moving with her husband to Croton-on-Hudson, Lorraine Hansberry continued not only her writing but also her involvement with civil rights and other political protests. In 1964, "The Move...
Hansberry was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 1963 and she died two years later on January 12, 1965, at age 34. Hansberry's funeral was held in Harlem and Paul Robeson and SNCC organizer James Forman gave eulogies.
As a young, Black woman, Hansberry was a groundbreaking artist, recognized for her strong, passionate voice on gender, class, and racial issues. She was the first Black playwright and youngest American to win a New York Critics’ Circle award. She and her words were the inspiration for Nina Simone's song "To Be Young Gifted and Black." In 2017, she ...
“Lorraine Hansberry, Creator of A Raisin in the Sun.” Literary Ladies Guide.“Lorraine Hansberry Biography.” Chicago Public Library.McKissack, Patricia C. and Fredrick L. Young, Black and Determined: A Biography of Lorraine Hansberry. Holiday House, 1998.May 22, 2019 · When Lorraine Vivian Hansberry died on January 12, 1965, her play The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window was at the end of a three-month run at Broadway’s Longacre Theatre. It was the second play written by a black woman to appear on Broadway.
Jul 26, 2019 · In 2017, at the Toronto International Film Festival, she premiered Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart, the first feature documentary about Lorraine Hansberry, which she independently produced with her husband and production partner, Randall MacLowry. Strain was 57, and the film had taken 15 years to complete.
Feb 20, 2020 · Lorraine Hansberry died in 1965 at the far too young age of thirty-four. In those few decades, however, she nevertheless became “the first Black woman to have her play produced on Broadway...
In 1959, Lorraine Hansberry made history as the first African American woman to have a show produced on Broadway—A Raisin in the Sun. As a playwright, feminist, and racial justice activist, Hansberry never shied away from tough topics during her short and extraordinary life.
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Aug 16, 2023 · Playwright and activist Lorraine Hansberry wrote 'A Raisin in the Sun' and was the first Black playwright and the youngest American to win a New York Critics’ Circle award.
