Hansberrys uncle, William Leo Hansberry, founded the Howard University African Civilization section of the history department, her cousin Shauneille Perry is an actress and playwright, and her younger relatives, Taye Hansberry is an actress and Aldridge Hansberry is a composer and flutist. 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. 236 pp. Follow her on Twitter at@emilykpowers. Lorraine Hansberry was the youngest of four children born to Carl Augustus Hansberry, a successful real-estate broker and Nannie Louise (born Perry), a driving school teacher and ward committeewoman. However, Karl Linder is the only character to appear in both . On March 11, 1959, Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun opened on Broadway and changed the face of American theater forever. A Reader's Guide to Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun - Pamela Loos 2008-01-01 Presents a critique and analysis of "A Raisin in the Sun," discussing the plot, themes, dramatic devices, and major characters in the play, and includes a brief overview of Hansberry's other works. Lorraine Hansberry, a celebrated African American playwright and writer, was not openly gay during her lifetime. Now More Than Ever, Nine Radical and Radiant Facts You Should Know About Lorraine Hansberry, When Colin Kaepernick Took the Risk to Take a Knee, Coming Home to the Motherland and Coming Out: A Cup Of Water Under My Bed Gets Translated to Spanish, Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry, Ring In the Zinntennial! Lorraine Hansberry was an avid civil rights activist because she understood clearly, that people need a champion in this life. Bella Sanchez is a recent graduate from Boston University, and the marketing intern for Beacon Press. Lorraines goal was to change society for the better. The granddaughter of a slave and the niece of a prominent African-American professor, Hansberry grew up with a keen awareness of African-American history and the ongoing struggle for civil rights. In 2010, Hansberry was inducted into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame. It was a critical time in the history of the civil rights movement. Fact 5: Indeed, Lorraine was an outspoken political activist from a young age. When she died of pancreatic cancer in 1965, she was only 34 years old. Image by Columbia Pictures from Wikimedia. 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." 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. . For local insights and insiders travel tips that you wont find anywhere else, search any keywords in the top right-hand toolbar on this page. Among the likes: her homosexuality, Eartha Kitt, and that first drink of Scotch. She was also a lesbian who kept her sexual preference as classified information, not able to come out during the tumultuous era in which basic human rights were denied on a regular basis, for certain groups of people in society. Hansberry inspired the Nina Simone song "To Be Young, Gifted and Black", whose title-line came from Hansberry's autobiographical play. Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965) was born on this day, May 19. She moved to Harlem in 1951 and became involved in activist struggles such as the fight against evictions. I found myself wishing I could have been Lorraines friend, or at the very least, a fly on the wall during some of her passionate discussions about politics, race, literature and art with friends and colleagues. Before her marriage, she had written in her personal notebooks about her attraction to women. In 1999 Hansberry was posthumously inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame. Comments (0). Hansberry died of pancreatic cancer on January 12, 1965, aged 34. Lorraine identified as an American radical and believed that extreme change was necessary to fight against racism and injustice internationally. Read more. Kicks. The production also led Hansberry to become the first black playwright and the youngest American to win a New York Critics Circle Award. The play opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on March 11, 1959, and was a great success. Lorraine Hansberry (1930 1965) was an American playwright and author best known for A Raisin in the Sun, a 1959 play influenced by her background and upbringing in Chicago. Hansberry was interested in writing from an early age and while in high school was drawn especially to the theatre. Lorraines extraordinary life has often been reduced to this one fact in classroomsif she is taught at all. In 1969, four years after Lorraine Hansberrys death, Nina Simone wrote a song titled Young, Gifted, and Black after being inspired by a talk that Hansberry delivered to college students. Hansberry was a critic of existentialism, which she considered too distant from the world's economic and geopolitical realities. In college, she took classes in stage design and sculpture, and turned her dorm room into an art studio. . She was the president of her colleges chapter of Young Progressives of America, she and worked on progressive candidate Henry Wallaces presidential campaign. . James Baldwin wrote the introduction to Hansberrys biography, To Be Young, Gifted, and Black with an endearing letter to Hansberry titled Sweet Lorraine.. Date of first performance 1959. Du Bois, who served as one of her mentors. Lorraine Vivian Hansberry (May 19, 1930 - January 12, 1965) was a playwright and writer. BA English MEd Adult Ed & Community & Human Resource Development and ABD in PhD studies in Indust & Org Psychology. Lorraine Hansberry became involved in the Civil Rights Movement in 1963 and joined people like Lena Horne and James Baldwin to test Robert Kennedy's position on civil rights. Simone wrote the song with the poet Weldon Irvine and told him that she wanted lyrics that would "make black children all over the world feel good about themselves forever." She was an anti-colonialist before independence had been won in Africa and the Caribbean.. Goodbye, Mr. Attorney General, she said, and turned and walked out of the room. The granddaughter of a freed slave, Lorraine Vivian Hansberry was born on May 19, 1930, to a successful real estate broker and a school teacher who resided in Chicago, Illinois. . Hansberry's most famous work, "A Raisin In The Sun" remains one of the best known plays ever written by a Black female playwright. Over the next two years, Raisin was translated into 35 languages and was being performed all over the world. A documentary has been made about her writing, Filmmaker Tracy Heather Strain is so taken with Lorraines work that she put together a powerful documentary so people would know who she was and what she stood for. Hansberry graduated from Betsy Ross Elementary in 1944 and from Englewood High School in 1948. Princeton Professor Imani Perry, author of Looking for Lorraine, wrote that she was a feminist before the feminist movement. She continued to write plays, short stories, and articles in addition to delivering speeches regarding race relations in the United States. Type of work Play. For their magazine, the Ladder, Hansberry contributed articles which talked of feminism and homophobia, revealing her homosexual nature. She was 34 years old when she died after a two-year fight with pancreatic cancer. 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. Despite her being married, Hansberry secretly affirmed her homosexuality in various correspondence and in short stories later discovered in archives. Posthumously, "A Raisin . Lorraines papers, including her letters and unpublished works, were private for years, with the public hearing only whispers or half-formed truths about some of the most significant aspects of Lorraines identity: her sexuality and her radical political leanings. He was one of the pioneers of African Studies in the United States and his work played an important role in challenging the prevailing Eurocentric views of African history and culture. Someday perhaps I might hold out my secret in my hand and sing about it to the scornful but if not I would more than survive (86). In 1959, Hansberry commented that women who are "twice oppressed" may become "twice militant". Image by Eden, Janine and Jim from Wikimedia. A satire involving miscegenation, the $400,000 production was co-produced by her husband Robert Nemiroff. Hansberry was raised in an African-American middle-class family with activist foundations. Perry explains that though the term radical has negative associations, for Lorraine, American radicalism was both a passion and a commitment. Hansberry may not have finished college, but she went on to make significant contributions to American culture and society through her art and activism. Hansberry attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison but left before completing her degree to pursue a career as a writer. She herself, knew what it was to be discriminated against. Your email address will not be published. . Lorraine Hansberry's ex-husband and dear friend, the songwriter and poet Robert Nemiroff, became her literary executor after her death in 1965. Carl died in 1946 when Lorraine was fifteen years old; "American racism helped kill him," she later said. Hansberry kept a low profile of her identity as a lesbian. 190-71 111th Ave , Saint Albans, NY 11412 is a single-family home listed for-sale at $799,000. In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Hansberry in the biographical dictionary 100 Greatest African Americans. The play has also been adapted into a film and has become a classic of American literature and theatre. You think you're accomplishing something in life until you realize that at age 29, playwright Lorraine Hansberry had a play produced on Broadway. Fact 1: The one fact you might already know! Lorraines mother, Nannie Hansberry, was also active in the struggle for civil rights. They must harass, debate, petition, give money to court struggles, sit-in, lie-down, strike, boycott, sing hymns, pray on stepsand shoot from their windows when the racists come cruising through their communities. Photo of a scene from the play A Raisin in the Sun.
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