Lorraine Hansberry

Lorraine Hansberry

Born:	May 19, 1930 Chicago, Illinois, USA
Died:	January 12 1965 (aged 34) New York, New York, USA
Occupation(s):	playwright, author
Nationality:	United States

Lorraine Hansberry (May 19, 1930 - January 12, 1965) was the first American playwright to create a realistic portrayal of African-American urban family life. She ushered in a new era in theater history by becoming the first African-American writer and the youngest American playwright to receive the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for her play A Raisin in the Sun (1959). Speaking of her watershed work, fellow writer James Baldwin said, "I had never in my life seen so many black people in the theater. And the reason was that never before, in the entire history of the American theater, had so much of the truth of black people's lives been seen on the stage."

Due to her untimely death at age 34, most of her body of work was left unfinished; and some of it was published posthumously. Near the end of her life she gave a talk to the United Negro College Fund contest winners describing them as, "... young, gifted and Black," a phrase that aptly portrays her as well.

Biography

Born in Chicago, Illinois, Hansberry was the youngest child of successful real estate broker Carl Augustus Hansberry and Nannie Perry Hansberry. Her father, who once ran for Congress as a Republican, was a respected member of the African American community on Chicago's South Side. Her mother, a former school teacher, was active in politics and her first cousin was Shaunielle Perry, who also went on to become a playwright.

When she was eight, the family moved into an all white neighborhood, where they faced racial discrimination. Hansberry attended a predominantly white public school while her parents - experienced in both real estate and politics - fought against segregation on two fronts: public schools and housing. Hansberry's father engaged in a legal battle against a racially "Restrictive covenant" that attempted to prohibit African-American families from buying homes. The legal struggle over their move led to the landmark Supreme Court case of Hansberry v. Lee, 311 U.S. 32 (1940). Though victors in the Supreme Court, Hansberry's family was subjected to prejudice and discrimination in their new surrounds. This formative childhood experience later inspired her to write her most famous work, A Raisin in the Sun.

Hansberry reflects upon this time of civil struggle for her family in her book To Be Young Gifted and Black:

25 years ago, [my father] spent a small personal fortune, his considerable talents, and many years of his life fighting, in association with NAACP attorneys, Chicago’s ‘restrictive covenants’ in one of this nations ugliest ghettos. That fight also required our family to occupy with disputed property in a hellishly hostile ‘white neighborhood’ in which literally howling mobs surrounded our house… My memories of this ‘correct’ way of fighting white supremacy in America including being spat at, cursed and pummeled in the daily trek to and from school. And I also remember my desperate and courageous mother, patrolling our household all night with a loaded German Luger pistol, doggedly guarding her four children, while my father fought the respectable part of the battle in the Washington court."

Hansberry attended the University of Wisconsin for two years and worked on the staff of Freedom magazine. She became increasingly involved in radical political causes and met her future husband, Robert Nemiroff, a Jewish graduate student from NYU, while at a political rally in New York City. In 1953, the night before their wedding they attended a protest on behalf of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg who were scheduled to be executed as communist spies.

The couple, after collaborating on several projects, separated in 1957 and divorced in 1964. However, Hansberry made Nimeroff her literary executor. After her death, he consolidated many of her writings into the play, To Be Young, Gifted and Black. Subsequently, it became the longest-running Off-Broadway play of the 1968-69 season. The play appeared in book form the following year under the title, To Be Young, Gifted and Black: Lorraine Hansberry in Her Own Words.

Hansberry died of pancreatic cancer on January 12, 1965 at the age of 34. Over 600 people attended her funeral in Harlem. Dr. Martin Luther King in his condolence letter said, "Her creative ability and her profound grasp of the deep social issues confronting the world today will remain an inspiration to generations yet unborn."

A Raisin In The Sun

Hansberry's 1959 play, A Raisin in the Sun, earned her the distinction of being the first African American woman to write a play produced on Broadway. Featuring the first all-black cast, it brought her overnight success. Two years later she wrote the screenplay for the film version which starred Sydney Poitier, who had starred in the original Broadway production along with Ruby Dee. Frank Rich of the New York Times compared the play to other American classics such as Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman and Tennessee Williams Glass Menagerie.

The play takes it title from a poem written by Langston Hughes /What happens to a dream deferred?/Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?/ Raisin tells the story of three generations of the Younger family, poor, black and cramped into a ghetto apartment. They inherit a sum of money from the grandfather's death and are then faced with a moral dilemma: they now have the opportunity to move out of their hard scrabble existence and into a real home but neighborhoods where blacks have recently moved into are receiving bomb threats.

The family's struggle is shown in all its emotionalism and complexity. The Youngers hope to have a piece of the "American Dream", particularly for the grandson, but are unsure how to proceed forward. The daughter struggles to know what her roots mean as a black American and the oldest son has his own ideas about how to provide for this family, largely dominated by the females in the household. As they struggle with tough choices - and with each other - sometimes weakening and sometimes advancing, those in the audience are left rooting for their ultimately brave decision in the face of prejudice and discrimination.

Her only other second full length play, The Sign in Sydney Brustein's Window did not experience the critical or commercial success of Raisin; however, many critics say that it demonstrated the subtlety and complexity that distinguished Hansberry's growth as a writer. It ran for 101 performances on Broadway and closed the night she died. It is the story of the conflicts and paradoxes of a group of young liberals and their struggle to make a difference while dealing with their own disillusionment as ideals are pitted against reality. The play incorporated her own experiences living in New York's Greenwhich Village with husband Nemiroff and their literary and activist circle of friends.

Legacy

After the success of Raisin in the Sun Lorraine Hansberry was considered an important forerunner in African American drama and literature. In San Francisco, The Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, which specializes in original stagings and revivals of African-American theatre, is named in her honor.

Singer and pianist Nina Simone, who was a close friend of Hansberry's, used the title of her unfinished play to write, together with Weldon Irvine, the hit song "To Be Young, Gifted, and Black." It was performed for the first time live by Nina Simone on Black Gold, (1970). Later it was adopted as the official Civil Rights anthem.

In 2004, A Raisin in the Sun was staged as a Broadway revival at the Royal Theatre earning Tony Awards for Phylicia Rashad and Audra McDonald. The revival also featured a Tony Award-nominated performance from Sanaa Lathan, and the well-publicized Broadway acting debut of Sean "Diddy" Combs as Walter Younger.

Works

• (---) On Summer (Essay)
• (1959) A Raisin in the Sun
• (1960) The Drinking Gourd
• (1961) A Raisin in the Sun, screenplay
• (1964) The Movement: Documentary of a Struggle for Equality
• (1965) The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window
• (1970) To Be Young, Gifted and Black: Lorraine Hansberry in Her Own Words
• (1994) Les Blancs: The Collected Last Plays/by Lorraine Hansberry

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• James, Rosetta. Cliff Notes on Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun. Lincoln, Nebraska: Cliff Notes Inc, 1992.
• Lorraine Hansberry (1930 - 1965) ” 2003
• "Lorraine Hansberry." Contemporary Black Biography, Volume 6, Gale Research, 1994 Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale.
• "Lorraine (Vivian) Hansberry" International Dictionary of Theatre, Volume 2: Playwrights. St. James Press, 1993. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2007.
• "Lorraine Vivian Hansberry." Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd ed. 17 Vols. Gale Research, 1998. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale 2007.
• "Lorraine Hansberry." Contemporary Heroes and Heroines. Book III. Edited by Terrie Rooney. Gale Research, 1998. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2007.
• Cheney, Anne. 1984. Lorraine Hansberry. Twayne's United States authors series, TUSAS 430. Boston: Twayne. ISBN 0805773657
• Nemiroff, Robert, and Lorraine Hansberry. 1969. To Be Young, Gifted, and Black; Lorraine Hansberry in Her Own Words. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. ISBN 0139230033
• Hansberry, Lorraine, Lorraine Hansberry, and Lorraine Hansberry. 1972. Les blancs: the collected last plays of Lorraine Hansberry. New York: Random House. ISBN 039446480X

Notes

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External links

Biography PAL: Perspectives in American Literature Voices from the Gaps: Women Writers of Color - Lorraine Hansberry Lorraine Hansberry's Gravesite Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorraine_Hansberry"

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