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Lorraine Hansberry

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Lorraine Hansberry
File:Lorrainehansberry.jpg
Occupationplaywright, author
NationalityUnited States


Lorraine Hansberry (May 19, 1930 - January 12, 1965) was an African American playwright and author of political speeches, letters, and essays.[1] Her most famous work, A Raisin in the Sun, was inspired by her family's legal battle against racially segregated housing laws in the Washington Park Subdivision of the South Side of Chicago during her childhood.[2]

Early life

Lorraine Hansberry was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1930.[3] She was the youngest of four children of Carl Augustus Hansberry (a prominent real estate broker) and Nannie Louise Perry, and niece of the Africanist Professor William Leo Hansberry,[4] after whom the Hansberry College of African Studies (in Naakka Nigeria) was named.[5] She grew up on the south side of Chicago in the Woodlawn neighborhood.[6]

The family then moved into an all-white neighborhood, where they faced racial discrimination.[7] Hansberry attended a predominantly white public school while her parents fought against segregation. Hansberry's father engaged in a legal battle against a racially restrictive covenant that attempted to prohibit African-American families from buying homes in the area.[8] The legal struggle over their move led to the landmark Supreme Court case Hansberry v. Lee, 311 U.S. 32 (1940). Though victorious in the Supreme Court, Hansberry's family was subjected to what Hansberry would later ironically describe as a "Warm and cuddly white neighborhood." This experience later inspired her to write her most famous work, A Raisin in the Sun.[9]

Career

Hansberry attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison, but found college to be uninspiring and left in 1950 to pursue her career as a writer in New York City.[10] She worked on the staff of the Black newspaper Freedom under the auspices of Paul Robeson, and also worked with W.E.B. DuBois, whose office was in the same building.[11] It was at that time she wrote A Raisin in the Sun. The play was a huge success. It was the first play written by an African-American woman to be produced on Broadway. Thus, at 29 years of age, she became the youngest American playwright, the first Black playwright, and only the 5th woman to receive the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for best play of the year.[12] While many of her other writings were published during her life - essays, articles, and the text for the SNCC book The Movement - the only other play that was produced during her life was The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window.[13] 

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Death

After a long battle with cancer, she died on January 12, 1965 at the age of thirty-four.[14] According to James Baldwin, Hansberry was prescient about many of the increasingly troubling conditions in the world, and worked to remedy them with literature. Baldwin believed "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."[15]

Other works

The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window ran for 110 performances on Broadway[16] and closed the night she died. Her ex-husband Robert Nemiroff became the executor for several unfinished manuscripts.[17] 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 1968-1969 season.[18] 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.[19]

Raisin, a musical based on A Raisin in the Sun, opened in New York in 1973, winning the Tony Award for Best Musical, book by Nemiroff, music by Judd Woldin, and lyrics by Robert Britten. It was revived on Broadway and also produced for television in 2008 by Sean "P Diddy" Combs, who also starred as Walter Lee Younger Jr. This 2008 production garnered two NAACP Image awards.

Legacy

A result of the success of A Raisin in the Sun was Hansberry's becoming the foremother of the modern African-American drama. She also contributed to the understanding of abortion, discrimination, and Africa. Less well known is that she joined the Daughters of Bilitis and contributed letters to their magazine, the Ladder, in 1957 that addressed feminism and homophobia.

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, used the title of her unfinished play to write a civil rights-themed song "To Be Young, Gifted and Black" together with Weldon Irvine. The single reached the top 10 of the R&B charts.[20] A studio recording by Simone was released as a single and the first live recording on October 26 1969 was captured on Black Gold (1970).

Her grand-niece is actress Taye Hansberry.

Lincoln University's first-year female dormitory is named Lorraine Hansberry Hall.[21]

There is a school in the Bronx called Lorraine Hansberry Academy.

There is an elementary school in St. Albans, New York named after the famous author and playwright.

In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Lorraine Hansberry on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.[22]

Both A Raisin in the Sun and A Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window are staples of high school English classrooms, richly discussed and debated.

A Raisin in the Sun famously opens with Langston Hughes' poem "A Dream Deferred"

Her Works

  • A Raisin in the Sun (1959)
  • A Raisin in the Sun (film), screenplay (1961)
    • A Raisin in the Sun (film), produced (2008)
  • On Summer (Essay) (19??)
  • The Drinking Gourd (1960)
  • The Movement: Documentary of a Struggle for Equality (1964)
  • The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window (1965)
  • To Be Young, Gifted and Black: Lorraine Hansberry in Her Own Words (1969)
  • Les Blancs: The Collected Last Plays / by Lorraine Hansberry Edited by Robert Nemiroff (1994)

Bibliography

  • James, Rosetta. Cliff Notes on Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun. Lincoln, Nebraska: Cliff Notes Inc., 1992
  • Toussaint - This fragment from a work in progress, unfinished at the time of Ms. Hansberry's untimely death, deals with a Haitian plantation owner and his wife whose lives are soon to change drastically as a result of the revolution of Toussaint L'Ouverture. (From the Samuel French, Inc. catalogue of plays)

References

  1. ^ Lipari, Lisbeth. "Queering the borders: Lorraine Hansberry’s 1957 Letters to The Ladder" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association, Marriott Hotel, San Diego, CA, May 27, 2003 Online <.PDF>. 2008-06-28 <http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p112109_index.html>
  2. ^ Carter, Stephen R., Commitment Amid Complexity: Lorraine Hansberry's Life in Action, MELUS (The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States), Vol. 7, Issue 3, at 39,40-41 (Autumn 1980), available at <http://www.jstor.org/stable/467027> (subscription required).
  3. ^ Carter 1980, p. 40.
  4. ^ Carter 1980, p. 40.
  5. ^ Les Blancs: The Collected Plays of Lorraine Hansberry, 36.
  6. ^ Harris, William, Woodlawn, University partners in education through Charter School, University of Chicago Chronicle, Vol. 26 No. 2 (Oct. 5, 2006), <http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/061005/woodlawn.shtml>
  7. ^ Carter 1980, pp. 40-41.
  8. ^ Carter 1980, p. 41.
  9. ^ Carter 1980, p. 41.
  10. ^ Carter 1980, p. 41.
  11. ^ Carter 1980, p. 41.
  12. ^ Carter 1980, p. 42.
  13. ^ Carter 1980, p. 43.
  14. ^ Carter 1980, p. 43.
  15. ^ Baldwin, James, Sweet Lorraine, introduction to Hansberry, Lorraine, To Be Young, Gifted and Black: An Informal Autobiography (Signet Paperback 1970), p. xiv, ISBN-10:0451159527.
  16. ^ Internet Broadway Database: The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window Production Credits
  17. ^ Carter 1980, p. 43.
  18. ^ Les Blancs: The Collected Last Plays of Lorraine Hansberry, Introduction
  19. ^ Carter 1980, p. 43.
  20. ^ The Nina Simone Web, "To Be Young, Gifted and Black" (1969)
  21. ^ Lincoln University website
  22. ^ Asante, Molefi Kete (2002). 100 Greatest African Americans: A Biographical Encyclopedia. Amherst, New York. Prometheus Books. ISBN 1-57392-963-8.

1. The Internet Broadway Database
2. GLAAD: Creating Role Models
3. Hansberry, Lorraine
4. The Nina Simone Web: To Be Young, Gifted And Black (1969)

See also

Wikiquote has quotations related to Lorraine Hansberry.
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