In 1952, Hansberry attended a peace conference in Montevideo, Uruguay, in place of Robeson, who had been denied travel rights by the State Department. . She is a tremendously important historical figure and through the documentary, Strain and her crew are making the public aware of just who Lorraine Hansberry was, what she stood for, and why her radical work is so important to the world today. A penetrating psychological study of the personalities and emotional conflicts within a working-class black family in Chicago, A Raisin in the Sun was directed by actor Lloyd Richards, the first African American to direct a play on Broadway since 1907. . Fifteen years before Lorraine was unsealed, Harris meticulously and accurately charted Hansberry's queer life; she did not rely on institutions, but New York City dykes. In fact, she is considered to be one of the greatest female, and African-American playwrights in all of the history of Broadway. Hansberry was a contributor to The Ladder, a predominantly lesbian publication, where she wrote about homophobia and feminism. [1] She was the first African-American female author to have a play performed on Broadway. She was born to Carl Augustus Hansberry and Nonnie Louise. This made her the first Chicago native to be honored along the North Halsted corridor. In 1969 a selection of her writings, adapted by Robert Nemiroff (to whom Hansberry was married from 1953 to 1964), was produced on Broadway as To Be Young, Gifted, and Black and was published in book form in 1970. Her father, Carl Hansberry was an activist who fought against racial discrimination in housing. She was a member of the National Organization for Women and wrote about womens issues in her personal journals and in her writing. The fascinating facts about Lorraine Hansberry following illustrate her development as a Black woman, activist, and writer. She reached out to the world through her plays. She is remembered for her first play, A Raisin in the Sun, which opened on Broadway in 1959, just six years before her death - and sometimes for her memoir, which was the inspiration for Nina Simone . Du Bois, whose office was in the same building, and other Black Pan-Africanists. Beacon Press. 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. In 2013, Nemiroff's daughter released the restricted materials to Kevin J. Mumford, who explored Hansberry's self-identification in subsequent work. . In 2017, Hansberry was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. Hansberry herself led an extraordinary life, which is profiled in the . Lorraines extraordinary life has often been reduced to this one fact in classroomsif she is taught at all. 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). . 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. Her father, Carl Augustus Hansberry was Leos brother. At the same time, she said, "some of the first people who have died so far in this struggle have been white men.". In 1944, she graduated from Betsy Ross Elementary. Check another American writer in Lorraine Hansberry facts. She was the youngest of Nannie Perry Hansberry and Carl Augustus Hansberry's four children. The sq. Hansberry was born into a Black family and grew up when the civil rights movement could use all the voices it could get. 1. Follow her on Twitter at@emilykpowers. . In 1963, Hansberry participated in a meeting with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, set up by James Baldwin. Lee, 311 U.S. 32 (1940), to which the playwright Lorraine Hansberry's father was a party, when he fought to have his day in court despite the fact that a previous class action about racially motivated restrictive covenants, Burke v. Kleiman, 277 Ill. App. . In 2014, the Lorraine Hansberry Literary Trust published a wealth of never-before-seen letters, writings, and journal entries, her heart and her mind put down on paper. Perry pored over these pages, and four years later wrote Looking for Lorraine. She came from a well-established family where both her parents had successful careers.. The title of the song refers to the title of Hansberry's autobiography, which Hansberry first coined when speaking 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." Her father was brave and daring enough to move his family into an all white neighborhood during tumultuous times. To be young, gifted and black Hansberrys father died in 1946 when she was only fifteen years old. Pointing to these letters as evidence, some gay and lesbian writers credited Hansberry as having been involved in the homophile movement or as having been an activist for gay rights. 519 (1934), had been similar to his situation. McKissack, Patricia C. and Fredrick L. Young, Black and Determined: A Biography of Lorraine Hansberry. . When the play opens, the Youngers are about to receive an insurance check for $10,000. Du Bois. The major theme throughout playwright Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun is how racism impacts daily life for this multi-generational family, not only in relations between black and. . Lorraine Hansberry (May 19, 1930-January 12, 1965) was a playwright, essayist, and civil rights activist. The song has also famously been recorded by artists including Aretha Franklin and Donny Hathaway. Lorraine Vivian Hansberry was born on May 19, 1930, into a middle-class family on the south side of Chicago, Illinois. 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. She was raised in a strong family, the youngest of three children born to Nannie Perry Hansberry and Carl Augustus Hansberry. Not only did Hansberry address social and racial issues in her novels and plays, but she also wrote articles true to her voice and beliefs for a progressive Black journal, James Baldwin was her close friend and confidant. 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. . Your email address will not be published. She was the daughter of a real estate entrepreneur, Carl Hansberry, and schoolteacher, Nannie Hansberry, as well as the niece of Pan-Africanist scholar and college professor Leo Hansberry. This page was last modified on 24 February 2023, at 15:15. 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. A selection of her writings was produced on Broadway asTo Be Young, Gifted, and Black(1969; book 1970). The thing I tried to show was the many gradations in even one Negro family, the clash of the old and the new, but most of all the unbelievable courage of the Negro people.. Lorraine Vivian Hansberry (May 19, 1930 January 12, 1965) was a playwright and writer. When Lorraine was seven years old, the family bought a house in a mostly white neighborhood. She was also an active participant in the civil rights movement, and her writings and speeches inspired many people to take action against racial inequality and injustice. Read all About It. He gathered her unpublished writings and first adapted them into a stage play, To Be Young, Gifted and Black, which ran off Broadway from 1968 to 1969. In 2010, Hansberry was inducted into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame. . BA English MEd Adult Ed & Community & Human Resource Development and ABD in PhD studies in Indust & Org Psychology. She was the president of her colleges chapter of Young Progressives of America, she and worked on progressive candidate Henry Wallaces presidential campaign. Image by Eden, Janine and Jim from Wikimedia. It was at one of these demonstrations that Hansberry met her husband and closest friend, Robert Nemiroff. Then, she smiled. Lorraine's father, Carl Augustus Hansberry, was a real-estate speculator and a proud race man. It is a play that tells the truth about people, Negroes [in the parlance of the time], and life. Later, an FBI reviewer of Raisin in the Sun highlighted its Pan-Africanist themes as "dangerous". The moving story of the life of the woman behind A Raisin in the Sun, the most widely anthologized, read, and performed play of the American stage, by the New York Times bestselling author of Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee. Photo of a scene from the play A Raisin in the Sun. Princeton Professor Imani Perry, author of Looking for Lorraine, wrote that she was a feminist before the feminist movement. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). Lorraine was inspired by her father and the play that she wrote may have been a little ahead of its time, but it won top prize from the prestigious New York Drama Critics Circle, which was no small feat. In 2013, Hansberry was also inducted into the Legacy Walk, making her the first Chicago-native to receive the honour, along with a position in the American Theatre Hall of Fame in the same year. A Raisin in the Sun Mass Market Paperbound Lorraine Hansberry. Lorraine Hansberry The Member of the Wedding The Metamorphosis The Natural The Plague The Plot Against America The Portrait of a Lady The Power of Sympathy The Red Badge of Courage The Road The Road from Coorain The Sound and the Fury The Stone Angel The Stranger The Sun Also Rises The Temple of My Familiar The Three Musketeers Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965) was born on this day, May 19. Additionally, Hansberry was known to be a champion of civil rights and social justice, and she was involved in several LGBTQ+ organizations and causes during her lifetime. She became close friends with James Baldwin and Nina Simone. 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. Hansberry wrote her first play, The Crystal Stair, during the same period, based on a struggling family in Chicago. On the night before their wedding in 1953, Nemiroff and Hansberry protested against the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in New York City. It appeared in book form the following year under the title To Be Young, Gifted and Black: Lorraine Hansberry in Her Own Words. 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. After she moved to New York City, Hansberry worked at the Pan-Africanist newspaper Freedom, where she worked with other intellectuals such as Paul Robeson and W. E. B. 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. . Young, gifted and black We must begin to tell our young Theres a world waiting for you This is a quest that's just begun. Her father, Carl Augustus Hansberry, was a successful real estate entrepreneur involved with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Urban League. To Be Young, Gifted and Black was a posthumously produced play and collection of writings that capped a brief and brilliant career. Lorraine Hansberry (19301965) was a playwright, writer, and activist. However, Hansberry only attended university for two years before dropping out and moving to New York City where she went to the New School for Social Research. Hansberry was raised in an African-American middle-class family with activist foundations. . Since its original production, A Raisin in the Sun has been revived on Broadway several times, most recently in 2014 with Denzel Washington as Walter Lee Younger. At first Sideways Stories from Wayside School was not a popular book in US. . How could we improve it? Lorraine Hansberry attended theUniversity of Wisconsinin 194850 and then briefly the School of theArt Institute of ChicagoandRoosevelt University(Chicago). It was, in fact, a requirement for human decency (150). And I am glad she was not smiling at me. MLS # 3441616 Queer Perspectives The award is given for excellence in the field of theatre, with categories including Best Play, Best Musical, Best Foreign Play, and Best Revival. Over the next two years, Raisin was translated into 35 languages and was being performed all over the world. The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the highest civilian honour in the United States, awarded by the President to individuals who have made exceptional contributions to the security or national interests of the country, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavours. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. Holiday House, 1998. Lorraine Vivian Hansberry (May 19, 1930 - January 12, 1965) was a playwright and writer. Fact 4: Lorraine worked at the progressive black Freedom Newspaper (published by Paul Robeson) with W. E . She underwent two operations, on June 24 and August 2. At the newspaper, she worked as a "subscription clerk, receptionist, typist, and editorial assistant" besides writing news articles and editorials.