"[57], Hansberry was appalled by the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which took place while she was in high school. /MediaBox [ 0 0 252 331 ] 158 0 obj 5 0 obj endobj /Resources 445 0 R /Resources 487 0 R /MediaBox [ 0 0 252 331 ] << /Contents 627 0 R 64 0 obj /Type /Page /Contents 618 0 R https://www.thoughtco.com/lorraine-hansberry-biography-3528287 (accessed March 4, 2023). Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart is the first-ever feature documentary about Lorraine Hansberry, the visionary playwright who authored the groundbreaking A Raisin in the Sun.An overnight sensation, the play transformed the American theater and has long been considered a classic, yet the remarkable story of the playwright faded from view. Dr. J. Carl Gregg 2 February 2020 frederickuu.org For this rst Sunday of Black History Month, I would like to invite us to focus on the fascinating life of Lorraine Hansberry, who died in 1965 at the far too young age of thirty-four. /Type /Page /Annots 452 0 R The Interviews subseries, 1959-1963, n.d. (.2 lin. /MediaBox [ 0 0 252 331 ] endobj 96 0 obj She underwent two operations, on June 24 and August 2. << >> /Parent 1 0 R << Moving with her husband to Croton-on-Hudson, Lorraine Hansberry continued not only her writing but also her involvement with civil rights and other political protests. /Contents 228 0 R Lorraine graduated from Englewood High School in Chicago, where she first became interested in theater. >> The statue will be sent on a tour of major US cities.[75]. Carter, "Commitment amid Complexity" (1980), p. 41. /Parent 1 0 R /Contents 294 0 R /Resources 541 0 R /Contents 510 0 R She wrote for Paul Robesons Freedom, a progressive publication, which put her in contact with other literary and political mentors such as W.E.B. /MediaBox [ 0 0 252 331 ] [51], The FBI began surveillance of Hansberry when she prepared to go to the Montevideo peace conference. endobj /Annots 293 0 R endobj >> /MediaBox [ 0 0 252 331 ] /Resources 379 0 R /Annots 563 0 R She moved to Harlem in 1951[12] and became involved in activist struggles such as the fight against evictions. /Parent 1 0 R << /Parent 1 0 R >> /Resources 189 0 R Carter, "Commitment amid Complexity" (1980), p. 49. /Type /Page Look at the work that awaits you! she said in a speech to young writers, calling them young, gifted and Black inspiring the Nina Simone song of the same name. << 14 0 obj /Resources 637 0 R What would this thinking have wrought? endobj /MediaBox [ 0 0 252 331 ] << /Resources 457 0 R 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. /MediaBox [ 0 0 252 331 ] Name: Lorraine Hansberry Birth Year: 1930 Birth date: May 19, 1930 Birth State: Illinois Birth City: Chicago Birth Country: United States Gender: Female Best Known For: Playwright and activist. /Resources 382 0 R endobj On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. >> A Raisin in the Sun portrays a few weeks in the life of the Youngers, a Black family living on the South Side of Chicago in the 1950s. /MediaBox [ 0 0 252 331 ] >> endobj Carter, Stephen R. "Commitment amid Complexity: Lorraine Hansberry's Life in Action". A satire involving miscegenation, the $400,000 production was co-produced by her husband Robert Nemiroff. Hansberry seemed to anticipate it all. When she was 8 years old, Hansberry's family moved house and desegregated a white neighborhood that had a restrictive covenant. /Parent 1 0 R HANSBERRY, Lorraine (b. /Type /Page /Contents 306 0 R endobj >> /Contents 474 0 R She was the first African-American female author to have a play performed on Broadway. [35] In 2013, Nemiroff's daughter released the restricted materials to Kevin J. Mumford, who explored Hansberry's self-identification in subsequent work. To quote Simone de Beauvoir, an important influence, Hansberry could not think in terms of joy or despair but in terms of freedom. And she could not think of freedom as a destination but as a practice, full of intervals, regressions. /Length 55074 endobj /Parent 1 0 R /ColorSpace << [74], On June 9, 2022, the Lilly Awards Foundation unveiled a statue of Hansberry in Times Square. << /MediaBox [ 0 0 252 331 ] /Annots 218 0 R 94 0 obj /Annots 497 0 R /Contents 537 0 R 32 0 obj /Contents 630 0 R /Resources 403 0 R << /Resources 161 0 R /Annots 434 0 R /Contents 525 0 R 118 0 obj /Resources 499 0 R At the same time, she said, "some of the first people who have died so far in this struggle have been white men. /Parent 1 0 R >> /Contents 495 0 R endobj >> /Contents 240 0 R /Contents 522 0 R /Parent 1 0 R /Type /Page /Type /Page [45], In 1963, Hansberry participated in a meeting with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, set up by James Baldwin. [39], When Nemiroff donated Hansberry's personal and professional effects to the New York Public Library, he "separated out the lesbian-themed correspondence, diaries, unpublished manuscripts, and full runs of the homophile magazines and restricted them from access to researchers." Someone hurled a brick through the window, narrowly missing Lorraine's head. Wilkins, "Beyond Bandung" (2006), p. 195. >> >> /MediaBox [ 0 0 252 331 ] 84 0 obj endobj /Annots 263 0 R >> >> /MediaBox [ 0 0 252 331 ] Her father built a real estate empire by chopping up larger apartments into smaller units to provide housing for the waves of Black migrants who fled the South only to encounter deeply segregated Chicago. /Annots 356 0 R << endobj /Parent 1 0 R /Type /Page >> /Parent 1 0 R /MediaBox [ 0 0 252 331 ] Visitors to her childhood home included such Black luminaries as Duke Ellington, W.E.B. /Parent 1 0 R << /MediaBox [ 0 0 252 331 ] /Annots 386 0 R /Parent 1 0 R /ColorSpace /DeviceRGB She had no patience for despair, for victims, really; her plays hinge on a decisive moment in which a character fends off complacency and takes a stand (quite often while making a thunderous speech about the necessity of taking a stand). An opportunity to escape from poverty comes in the form of a $10,000 life insurance check that the matriarch of the family (Lena Younger or Mama) receives upon her husband's death. /Kids [ 4 0 R 5 0 R 6 0 R 7 0 R 8 0 R 9 0 R 10 0 R 11 0 R 12 0 R 13 0 R 14 0 R 15 0 R 16 0 R 17 0 R 18 0 R 19 0 R 20 0 R 21 0 R 22 0 R 23 0 R 24 0 R 25 0 R 26 0 R 27 0 R 28 0 R 29 0 R 30 0 R 31 0 R 32 0 R 33 0 R 34 0 R 35 0 R 36 0 R 37 0 R 38 0 R 39 0 R 40 0 R 41 0 R 42 0 R 43 0 R 44 0 R 45 0 R 46 0 R 47 0 R 48 0 R 49 0 R 50 0 R 51 0 R 52 0 R 53 0 R 54 0 R 55 0 R 56 0 R 57 0 R 58 0 R 59 0 R 60 0 R 61 0 R 62 0 R 63 0 R 64 0 R 65 0 R 66 0 R 67 0 R 68 0 R 69 0 R 70 0 R 71 0 R 72 0 R 73 0 R 74 0 R 75 0 R 76 0 R 77 0 R 78 0 R 79 0 R 80 0 R 81 0 R 82 0 R 83 0 R 84 0 R 85 0 R 86 0 R 87 0 R 88 0 R 89 0 R 90 0 R 91 0 R 92 0 R 93 0 R 94 0 R 95 0 R 96 0 R 97 0 R 98 0 R 99 0 R 100 0 R 101 0 R 102 0 R 103 0 R 104 0 R 105 0 R 106 0 R 107 0 R 108 0 R 109 0 R 110 0 R 111 0 R 112 0 R 113 0 R 114 0 R 115 0 R 116 0 R 117 0 R 118 0 R 119 0 R 120 0 R 121 0 R 122 0 R 123 0 R 124 0 R 125 0 R 126 0 R 127 0 R 128 0 R 129 0 R 130 0 R 131 0 R 132 0 R 133 0 R 134 0 R 135 0 R 136 0 R 137 0 R 138 0 R 139 0 R 140 0 R 141 0 R 142 0 R 143 0 R 144 0 R 145 0 R 146 0 R 147 0 R 148 0 R 149 0 R 150 0 R 151 0 R 152 0 R 153 0 R 154 0 R 155 0 R 156 0 R 157 0 R 158 0 R 159 0 R ] /Resources 211 0 R "Queering the borders: Lorraine Hansberry's 1957 Letters to The Ladder". /Parent 1 0 R /Annots 608 0 R /Contents 345 0 R endobj /Type /Page /MediaBox [ 0 0 252 331 ] Her best-known work, the play A Raisin in the Sun, highlights the lives of black Americans in Chicago living under racial segregation. /MediaBox [ 0 0 252 331 ] As a playwright, feminist, and racial justice activist, Hansberry never shied away from tough topics during her short and extraordinary life. /Parent 1 0 R << endobj /Annots 560 0 R /Resources 397 0 R /Resources 544 0 R Lorraine Vivian Hansberry (May 19, 1930 - January 12, 1965) was a playwright and writer. /Parent 1 0 R /Type /Page /Parent 1 0 R << Lincoln University's first-year female dormitory is named Lorraine Hansberry Hall. /Contents 465 0 R /Parent 1 0 R /Annots 311 0 R These twin identities would dominate her life and her work. /Contents 603 0 R 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. /Resources 283 0 R 69 0 obj Biography. /Resources 223 0 R 28 0 obj Lorraine Hansberry speech, "The Nation Needs Your Gifts", given to Reader's Digest/United Negro College Fund creative writing contest winners, NYC, May 1, 1964. endobj 51 0 obj /Type /Page 78 0 obj << /Contents 225 0 R Soon after A Raisin in the Sun made history, the 28-year-old writer and activist talked to Studs Terkel about racial and gender inequity and the role of art in confronting difficult truths about our world.. To learn more about Lorraine Hansberry, watch the documentary Sighted Eyes . /Annots 410 0 R 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. /Type /Page 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. Sidney Poitier expressed interest in taking the part of the son, and soon a director and other actors (including Louis Gossett, Ruby Dee, and Ossie Davis) were committed to the performance. /Type /Page [43] In her award-winning Hansberry biography Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry, Imani Perry writes that in his "gorgeous" images, "Attie captured her intellectual confidence, armour, and remarkable beauty. The fact still feels intolerable, almost unassimilable her death not merely tragedy but a kind of theft. 123 0 obj 97 0 obj << 2 0 obj Carter, "Commitment amid Complexity" (1980), p. 47. /Parent 1 0 R "No sooner had she joined Freedom, which had been founded by Paul Robeson as part of his tightening embrace of the Communist Party line in the increasingly frigid Cold War than she was serving as a participant-correspondent: she accompanied the 'Sojourners for Truth and Justice,' a group of 132 black women from 15 states which was convened in September 1951, in Washington by the long-time activist Mary Church Terrell 'to demand that the Federal Government protect the lives and liberties' of black Americans. endobj 99 0 obj /Parent 1 0 R A Raisin in the Sun Summary. /Contents 444 0 R In 2010, Hansberry was inducted into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame. [ /Pattern /DeviceRGB ] /Resources 442 0 R endobj /MediaBox [ 0 0 252 331 ] /Parent 1 0 R /Annots 365 0 R endobj << /Type /Page /Parent 1 0 R /Resources 586 0 R 11 0 obj endobj /Type /Page 131 0 obj endobj /Parent 1 0 R /Type /Page endobj /Parent 1 0 R /Resources 198 0 R [1] She was the first African-American female author to have a play p. /Parent 1 0 R << /Contents 297 0 R NEW YORK - April 1959: Writer and playwright Lorraine Hansberry poses for a portrait in her apartment at 337 Bleecker Street (where she had written the first-ever Broadway play by an African . The decision is nevertheless considered to have been an early weakening in the restrictive covenants that enforced segregation nationally. Lorraine Hansberry, Robert A. Nemiroff (Editor), Spike Lee (Commentaries by), Margaret B. Wilkerson (Introduction) 3.77 avg rating 814 ratings published 1992 8 editions. >> Fast Facts: Lorraine Hansberry (My homosexuality made both at age 29.) >> >> Robert Nemiroff, The New York Times profiled her, voluble, energetic, pretty and small.. /Parent 1 0 R Mumford.[62]. endobj Living on the Lower East Side, Lorraine was free to explore the life of . endobj 135 0 obj /Resources 192 0 R /Annots 377 0 R /Parent 1 0 R /Parent 1 0 R endobj /Annots 554 0 R endobj << 31 0 obj There are strong influences from her own family on the characters as well. << When the police finally arrived, one officer remarked, "Some . Watch the 2022 One Book, One Chicago keynote, Are you enjoying this season's One Book, One, Has this season of One Book, One Chicago and the, A Raisin in the Sun: One Book, One Chicago Spring 2003, Historical Context of A Raisin in the Sun, Background and Criticism of A Raisin in the Sun, Express Yourself: Creativity-Sparking Books, Wilkerson, Margaret B. /Parent 1 0 R At Freedom, she worked with W. E. B. /MediaBox [ 0 0 252 331 ] 116 0 obj endobj Lorraine Hansberry completed her first play in 1957, taking her title from Langston Hughes' poem, "Harlem.". /Type /Page [10] Lorraine was taught: "Above all, there were two things which were never to be betrayed: the family and the race."[8]. /MediaBox [ 0 0 252 331 ] /Contents 381 0 R Lorraine Vivian Hansberry was born on May 19, 1930, into a middle-class family on the south side of Chicago, Illinois. << << /Resources 436 0 R Walter Lee, Jr. and Ruth are composites of Hansberrys brothers, their wives and her sister, Mamie. Although the case did not argue that racially restrict covenants were unlawful, it marked the beginning of their end. endobj /Parent 1 0 R /Annots 488 0 R /Type /Page /CSpg /DeviceGray /MediaBox [ 0 0 252 331 ] >> [18] 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. Oh, what a lovely, precious dream. [39] 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 196869 season. 39 0 obj /MediaBox [ 0 0 252 331 ] Lorraine Hansberry, child of a cultured, middle-class black family but early exposed to the poverty and discrimination suffered by most blacks in America, fought passionately against racism in her writings and throughout her life. /Type /Page /MediaBox [ 0 0 252 331 ] endobj /MediaBox [ 0 0 252 331 ] Sun Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun A Raisin in the Sun A Raisin in . /MediaBox [ 0 0 252 331 ] /Parent 1 0 R endobj [60], Hansberry's ex-husband, Robert Nemiroff, became the executor for several unfinished manuscripts. << /MediaBox [ 0 0 252 331 ] >> /Annots 629 0 R >> /Contents 513 0 R /Resources 598 0 R When Hansberry died at 34 on Jan, 12, 1965, of pancreatic cancer, the arts community mourned. Last Updated on May 5, 2015, by eNotes Editorial. They married on June 20, 1953 at the Hansberrys home in Chicago. She was particularly interested in the situation of Egypt,[5] "the traditional Islamic 'cradle of civilization,' where women had led one of the most important fights anywhere for the equality of their sex. We get rid of all the little bombsand the big bombs," though she also believed in the right of people to defend themselves with force against their oppressors. /Type /Page >> Carl Hansberry was also a supporter of the Urban League and NAACP in Chicago. The Radiant & Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry The Rev. /Contents 573 0 R It was the first play by a Black woman to be produced on Broadway. Lewis, Jone Johnson. /Resources 331 0 R /Type /Page /Contents 591 0 R /Type /Page >> /MediaBox [ 0 0 252 331 ] >> >> /Parent 1 0 R \\@!fqYZfd 5"s=s\&r Q 121 0 obj >> Lorraine Hansberry was born in 1930. /MediaBox [ 0 0 252 331 ] Hansberry noted similarities between Nannie Hansberry and Mama Younger and between Carl Hansberry and Big Walter. 19 May 1930;d. 12 January 1965), writer, activist. >> /Type /Page /Type /Page "While working at, Wilkins, "Beyond Bandung" (2006), pp. /Type /Page 46 0 obj /Resources 238 0 R endobj /Contents 477 0 R The thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, she later wrote, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely., Hansberry died in 1965, at 34, of cancer. /Parent 1 0 R /Annots 395 0 R 107 0 obj /Parent 1 0 R /Resources 535 0 R /Resources 646 0 R Contains materials created primarily by Hansberry from 1950 until her death in 1964. [61] It appeared in book form the following year under the title To Be Young, Gifted and Black: Lorraine Hansberry in Her Own Words. /Contents 486 0 R /Resources 370 0 R It narrowly missed Hansberry, who was 7 years old. [72], In January 2018, the PBS series American Masters released a new documentary, Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart, directed by Tracy Heather Strain. /Parent 1 0 R /Type /Page /Type /Page /Annots 305 0 R << Never before, in the entire history of the American theater, had so much of the truth of Black peoples lives been seen on the stage, her friend James Baldwin would later recall.