Lorraine Hansberry Biography and List of Works

American playwright and painter whose A RAISIN IN THE SUN (1959) was the first drama by a black woman to be produced on Broadway. It also won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award. Hansberry's work celebrates individuals who stand up for their own and other's dignity.

Lorraine Hansberry was born in Chicago as the daughter of a prominent real-estate broker and the niece of a Harvard University professor of African history. Her parents were intellectuals and activists. Her father won an anti-segregation case before the Illinois Supreme Court, upon which the events in A Raisin in the Sun was loosely based. When she was eight, her parents bought a house in a white neighbourhood and their experience of discrimination there led to a civil rights case, which they won. Hansberry's parents sent her to public schools rather than private ones as a protest against the segregation laws. She studied art at the University of Wisconsin and in Mexico. In 1950 she moved to New York, where she started her career as a writer. She wrote for an African-American newspaper called Freedom, and met among others the famous writer Langston Hughes.

In 1953 Hansberry married a Jewish songwriter. She worked as a waitress and cashier, writing in her spare time. A Raisin in the Sun was a huge success. The play took its title from a line in Langston Hughes's poem. The film version of 1961, starring Sidney Poitier, received a special award at the Cannes festival. Hansberry's next play, THE SIGN IN SIDNEY BRUSTEIN'S WINDOW (1964), was set in the New York City neighbourhood of Greenwich Village, which she had long made her home. The play had only modest success on Broadway. Her premature death at the age of thirty-four cut short her promising career. She died of cancer on February 19, 1952. Hansberry's TO BE YOUNG, GIFTED, AND BLACK, adapted from her writings, was produced Off-Broadway in 1969. It also appeared in book form the next year. LES BLANCS, a drama set in Africa, and adapted by her ex-husband Robert Nemiroff, was produced in 1970.

In 1973, Neminoff and Charlotte Zaltzberg adapted Hansberry's famous play into a musical, entitled Raisin. It won the Tony Award. Raisin was revived in 1981, when Claudia McNeil, who had played Lena in the original 1959 production, recreated the role in the musical adaptation. Her husband published a collection of letters and other writings after hear death.

A Raisin in the Sun - Produced New York, Ethel Barrymore Theatre, March 11, 1959. - The play is set in Southside Chicago. Walter Lee, a black chauffeur, dreams of a better life, and hopes to use his father's life insurance money to open a liquor store. His mother, who rejects the liquor business, uses some of the money to secure a proper house for the family. Mr. Lindner, a representative of the all-white neighbourhood, tries to buy them out. Walter sinks rest of the money into his business scheme, only to have it stolen by one of his partners. In despair Walter contacts Lindner, and almost begs to buy them out, but with the help of his wife, Walter asserts his dignity and decides that the family will take the house after all.

For further information: Lorraine Hansberry - For further reading: Lorraine Hansberry by Anne Cheney (1984); Performing Feminism, ed. by Sue-Ellen Case (1990); Hansberry's Drama by Steven Carter (1991)

A RAISIN IN THE SUN, (1959)