LORRAINE HANSBERRY (1930-1965)
Lorraine Hansberry was a playwright, feminist, and racial justice activist. She was the first African American woman to have a show produced on Broadway and win a New York Critics’ Circle award with A Raisin In The Sun.
Lorraine Hansberry was born in 1930 in Chicago, IL and was the youngest of four. Growing up in Chicago, her family was involved in the racial justice movements of the era.
In 1937, her family deliberately moved to an all-white neighborhood to challenge the restrictive covenant laws. They were not welcomed in the neighborhood and a white mob gathered around the house. Someone threw a brick through the window, narrowly missing an 8-year-old Hansberry’s head.
When the Supreme Court of Illinois held up the legality of the restrictive covenant, the family was forced to move out. Her parents sued, taking the case all the way to the Supreme Court where they won on a “legal technicality.” The result was the opening 30 blocks of South Side Chicago to African Americans.
Hansberry graduated from high school in 1948 and went to University of Wisconsin-Madison. While there, she became interested in theater, politics, and the global anti-colonial movement. Hansberry left before completing her degree and studied painting in Chicago and Mexico.
She moved to NYC in 1950 and became more active in politics, writing for Freedom, a progressive publication. During a protest at NYU on racial discrimination, Hansberry met Robert Nemeroff, a white Jewish songwriter who shared many of Hansberry’s views. The two were married soon thereafter in Chicago, though interracial marriage was still illegal in many states.
The couple divorced after 9 years, though remained friends for the rest of her life. Despite her marriage to a man, Hansberry identified as a lesbian, though she wasn’t “out” in the traditional sense since homosexuality was illegal in NYC.
In 1956, Hansberry quit working at Freedom, devoting her time to writing on her own. Inspired by her childhood and her love of theater and started writing a play. Initially called The Crystal Stair, Hansberry renamed it A Raisin In The Sun, a phrase taken from a Langston Hughes poem.
The play drew on the lives of working-class African Americans who rented houses from her father and who Hansberry went to school with. As James Baldwin so eloquently stated, “Never before in the entire history of the American theatre had so much of the truth of Black people’s lives been seen on the stage.”
Many expected the play to flop when it came to Broadway in 1959. Instead, it had a run of 530 performances over 19 months. The play was nominated for 4 Tony Awards and won the New York Critics’ Circle award for best play in 1959, making Hansberry the first black playwright and youngest American to win. Most importantly, A Raisin In The Sun made the theater a place where African American stories and presence were welcome.
A Raisin In The Sun was made into a movie in 1961 starring Sidney Poitier and received an award at the Cannes Film Festival.
She wrote and produced another play, The Sign in Sidney Brunstein’s Window, about a Jewish intellectual. The play ran for 101 performances and dealt with themes of race, gender, and sexuality. It received mixed reviews, but her friends rallied to keep the play running.
The Sign closed on January 12, 1965, the day Hansberry died of pancreatic at the age of 34.
Sources:
- National Women’s History Museum
- Lorraine Hansberry Literary Trust
- Biography.com
- Chicago Public Library
- National Museum of African American History & Culture
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