African American playwright and writer Lorraine Vivian Hansberry, who 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. The title of the play was taken from the poem ‘Harlem’ by Langston Hughes: ‘What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?’ At the age of 29, she won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award — making her the first African-American dramatist, the fifth woman, and the youngest playwright to do so.”
Lorraine Hansberry was born on May 19, 1930 in Chicago, Illinois. “In 1938, her father bought a house in the Washington Park Subdivision of the South Side of Chicago, incurring the wrath of some of their white neighbors. The latter’s legal efforts to force the Hansberry family out culminated in the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Hansberry v. Lee, 311 U.S. 32 (1940). The restrictive covenant was ruled contestable, though not inherently invalid; these covenants were eventually ruled unconstitutional in Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948).”
“Carl Hansberry was also a supporter of the Urban League and NAACP in Chicago. Both Hansberrys were active in the Chicago Republican Party. Carl died in 1946 when Lorraine was fifteen years old; ‘American racism helped kill him,’ she later said.”
“The Hansberrys were routinely visited by prominent black people, including sociology professor W. E. B. Du Bois, poet Langston Hughes, singer, actor, and political activist Paul Robeson, musician Duke Ellington, and Olympic gold medalist Jesse Owens.”
“Hansberry graduated from Betsy Ross Elementary in 1944 and from Englewood High School in 1948. She attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she immediately became politically active with the Communist Party USA and integrated a dormitory. Hansberry’s classmate Bob Teague remembered her as ‘the only girl I knew who could whip together a fresh picket sign with her own hands, at a moment’s notice, for any cause or occasion’.”
“She worked on Henry A. Wallace’s Progressive Party presidential campaign in 1948, despite her mother’s disapproval. She spent the summer of 1949 in Mexico, studying painting at the University of Guadalajara.”
“In 1950, Hansberry decided to leave Madison and pursue her career as a writer in New York City, where she attended The New School. She moved to Harlem in 1951 and became involved in activist struggles such as the fight against evictions.”
“In 1951, Hansberry joined the staff of the black newspaper Freedom, edited by Louis E. Burnham and published by Paul Robeson. At Freedom, she worked with W. E. B. Du Bois, whose office was in the same building, and other black Pan-Africanists. At the newspaper, she worked as a ‘subscription clerk, receptionist, typist, and editorial assistant’ besides writing news articles and editorials.”
“Additionally, she wrote scripts at Freedom. To celebrate the newspaper’s first birthday, Hansberry wrote the script for a rally at Rockland Palace, a then-famous Harlem hall, on ‘the history of the Negro newspaper in America and its fighting role in the struggle for a people’s freedom, from 1827 to the birth of FREEDOM.’ Performers in this pageant included Paul Robeson, his longtime accompanist Lawrence Brown, the multi-discipline artist Asadata Dafora, and numerous others. The following year, she collaborated with the already produced playwright Alice Childress, who also wrote for Freedom, on a pageant for its Negro History Festival, with Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, Douglas Turner Ward, and John O. Killens. This is her earliest remaining theatrical work.”
“Like Robeson and many black civil rights activists, Hansberry understood the struggle against white supremacy to be interlinked with the program of the Communist Party. One of her first reports covered the Sojourners for Truth and Justice convened in Washington, D.C., by Mary Church Terrell. Hansberry traveled to Georgia to cover the case of Willie McGee, and was inspired to write the poem ‘Lynchsong’ about his case.”
“Hansberry worked on not only the US civil rights movement, but also global struggles against colonialism and imperialism. She wrote in support of the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya, criticizing the mainstream press for its biased coverage.”
“Hansberry often explained these global struggles in terms of female participants. She was particularly interested in the situation of Egypt, ‘the traditional Islamic “cradle of civilization,” where women had led one of the most important fights anywhere for the equality of their sex’.”
“In 1952, Hansberry attended a peace conference in Montevideo, Uruguay, in place of Robeson, who had been denied travel rights by the State Department.”
“On June 20, 1953, Hansberry married Robert Nemiroff, a Jewish publisher, songwriter, and political activist. Hansberry and Nemiroff moved to Greenwich Village, the setting of her second Broadway play, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window. On the night before their wedding in 1953, Nemiroff and Hansberry protested against the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in New York City.”
“The success of the hit pop song ‘Cindy, Oh Cindy’, co-authored by Nemiroff, enabled Hansberry to start writing full-time. Although the couple separated in 1957 and divorced in 1962, their professional relationship lasted until Hansberry’s death.”
“Hansberry lived for many years as a closeted lesbian. Before her marriage, she had written in her personal notebooks about her attraction to women.” According to Kevin J. Mumford, “Hansberry’s lesbianism left her feeling isolated while A Raisin in the Sun catapulted her to fame; still, while ‘her impulse to cover evidence of her lesbian desires sprang from other anxieties of respectability and conventions of marriage, Hansberry was well on her way to coming out.’ Near the end of her life, she declared herself ‘committed [to] this homosexuality thing’ and vowed to ‘create my life—not just accept it’. Before her death, she built a circle of gay and lesbian friends, took several lovers, vacationed in Provincetown (where she enjoyed, in her words, ‘a gathering of the clan’), and subscribed to several homophile magazines.”
“Hansberry’s atheist views were expressed within her dramas, particularly A Raisin in the Sun. Critics and historians have contextualised the humanist themes of her work within a broader history of black atheist literature and a wider English language humanist tradition.”
“In 1964, Hansberry and Nemiroff divorced but continued to work together. Upon his ex-wife’s death, Robert Nemiroff donated all of Hansberry’s personal and professional effects to the New York Public Library. In doing so, he blocked access to all materials related to Hansberry’s lesbianism, meaning that no scholars or biographers had access for more than 50 years. In 2013, Nemiroff’s daughter released the restricted materials to Kevin J. Mumford, who explored Hansberry’s self-identification in subsequent work.”
“Written and completed in 1957, A Raisin in the Sun opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on March 11, 1959, becoming the first play by an African American woman to be produced on Broadway. The 29-year-old author became the youngest American playwright and only the fifth woman to receive the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play. She was also nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play, among the four Tony Awards that the play was nominated for in 1960. Over the next two years, Raisin was translated into 35 languages and was being performed all over the world.”
“In April 1959, as a sign of her sudden fame just one month after A Raisin in the Sun premiered on Broadway, photographer David Attie did an extensive photo-shoot of Hansberry for Vogue magazine, in the apartment at 337 Bleecker Street where she had written Raisin, which produced many of the best-known images of her today.”
“Hansberry’s screenplay of A Raisin in the Sun was produced by Columbia Pictures and released in 1961. The film starred Sidney Poitier and Ruby Dee, and was directed by Daniel Petrie.”
“In 1961, Hansberry was set to replace Vinnette Carroll as the director of the musical Kicks and Co, after its try-out at Chicago’s McCormick Place. Written by Oscar Brown, Jr., the show featured an interracial cast including Lonnie Sattin, Nichelle Nichols, Vi Velasco, Al Freeman, Jr., Zabeth Wilde, and Burgess Meredith in the title role of Mr. Kicks. A satire involving miscegenation, the $400,000 production was co-produced by her husband Robert Nemiroff. Despite a warm reception in Chicago, the show never made it to Broadway.”
“In 1963, Hansberry participated in a meeting with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, set up by James Baldwin. Also in 1963, Hansberry was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She underwent two operations, on June 24 and August 2. Neither of the surgeries was successful in removing the cancer.”
“Hansberry agreed to speak to the winners of a creative writing conference on May 1, 1964: ‘Though it is a thrilling and marvelous thing to be merely young and gifted in such times, it is doubly so, doubly dynamic — to be young, gifted and black’.”
“While many of her other writings were published in her lifetime — essays, articles, and the text for the SNCC book The Movement: Documentary of a Struggle for Equality— the only other play given a contemporary production was The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window. It ran for 101 performances on Broadway and closed the night she died.”
“Hansberry died of pancreatic cancer on January 12, 1965, aged 34. In his introduction to Hansberry’s posthumously released autobiography, To Be Young, Gifted and Black: An Informal Autobiography, James Baldwin wrote that ‘it is not at all farfetched to suspect that what she saw contributed to the strain which killed her, for the effort to which Lorraine was dedicated is more than enough to kill a man’.”
“Hansberry’s funeral was held in Harlem on January 15, 1965. Paul Robeson and SNCC organizer James Forman gave eulogies. The presiding minister, Eugene Callender, recited a message from Baldwin, and also a message from the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. that read: ‘Her creative ability and her profound grasp of the deep social issues confronting the world today will remain an inspiration to generations yet unborn.’ The 15th was also Dr. King’s birthday. She is buried at Asbury United Methodist Church Cemetery in Croton-on-Hudson, New York.”
“Hansberry’s ex-husband, Robert Nemiroff, became the executor for several unfinished manuscripts. He added minor changes to complete the play Les Blancs, which Julius Lester termed her best work, and he adapted many of her writings into the play To Be Young, Gifted and Black, which was the longest-running Off Broadway play of the 1968–69 season. It appeared in book form the following year under the title To Be Young, Gifted and Black: Lorraine Hansberry in Her Own Words. She left behind an unfinished novel and several other plays, including The Drinking Gourd and What Use Are Flowers?, with a range of content, from slavery to a post-apocalyptic future.”
“In 1999 Hansberry was posthumously inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame.”
“The Lorraine Hansberry Theatre of San Francisco, which specializes in original stagings and revivals of African-American theatre, is named in her honor.”
“Founded in 2004 and officially launched in 2006, The Hansberry Project of Seattle, Washington was created as an African-American theatre lab, led by African-American artists and was designed to provide the community with consistent access to the African-American artistic voice. A Contemporary Theatre (ACT) was their first incubator and in 2012 they became an independent organization. The Hansberry Project is rooted in the convictions that black artists should be at the center of the artistic process, that the community deserves excellence in its art, and that theatre’s fundamental function is to put people in a relationship with one another. Their goal is to create a space where the entire community can be enriched by the voices of professional black artists, reflecting autonomous concerns, investigations, dreams, and artistic expression.”
“In 2010, Hansberry was inducted into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame. In 2013, Hansberry was inducted into the Legacy Walk, an outdoor public display that celebrates LGBT history and people. This made her the first Chicago native to be honored along the North Halsted corridor. Also in 2013, Hansberry was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame.”
“In 2017, Hansberry was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.”
“On June 9, 2022, the Lilly Awards Foundation unveiled a statue of Hansberry in Times Square. The statue will be sent on a tour of major US cities.”
Non-whitewashed history together 