Lorraine Hansberry

Born 19 May, 1930 to Nanny Perry and Carl Augustus Hansberry Sr., Lorraine Vivian Hansberry was the youngest of four children. While others floundered during The Great Depression, Carl Sr. managed to provide for his family in Chicago with a few shrewd real estate investments. With money made from opening one of the few Black owned banks in Chicago, Mr. Hansberry was able to turn larger apartments into one room kitchenettes and build a pocket of wealth for his children. Still, because of racist redlining, the middle class Hansberrys were relegated to Chicago's South Side. The Hansberry house was often visited by important Black intellectuals and activists including Lorraine's uncle, William Leo who was an African American studies professor at Howard University, W.E.B DuBois, Langston Hughes, Jesse Owens and Paul Robeson.

In May 1937, Carl Sr. decided to move the house out of the Black Belt of Chicago and with the help of Harry H. Pace, president of the Supreme Liberty Life Insurance Company and several white realtors, secretly bought property in a predominately White area of Chicago. The house, which was located at 413 E. 60th Street and 6140 S. Rhodes Avenue, was vandalized and terrorized by mobs of White neighbors who opposed the family's presence in the neighborhood. Lorraine would later describe the space as "to put it mildly, a very hostile neighborhood". This was highlighted by an incident wherein a mob of White folk threw a brick through the family's window, narrowly missing 8 year old Lorraine's head.

When the family was served an injunction by The Kenwood Improvement Association for the Hansberry family to vacate their home which was granted by a Circuit Court judge, the appeal was then upheld by the Illinois Supreme Court. Carl Sr. challenged the ruling, which led to the landmark U. S. Supreme Court case Hansberry v. Lee.

Following the court case and a failed run for Congress, Carl Sr. decided to move the family out of the country and went to Mexico to find a home but while there suffered a cranial hemorrhage and passed away before the Hansberrys could join him. Lorraine was 15 when her father died and later said "American racism helped kill him."

Lorraine finished her high school education at Chicago's Englewood High School and then went on to attend The University of Wisconsin where she studied stage design, drama, art and literature and became the chairperson of the Young Progressives of America. She left the school after just two years and after brief stints at the University of Guadalajara studying painting and Roosevelt University studying art, she moved to New York City and joined the staff at Paul Robeson's publication Freedom.

While working for Freedom Lorraine, became even more energized to help the cause of her race and was cast alongside a worthy cast of characters who could feed her Black intellectualism. Contributers to the magazine were W.E.B DuBois, who shared an office with the publication, Alice Childress, and Charles White. Hansberry herself contributed at least 22 articles ranging in topics from African politics to entertainment reviews.

She was also given extrodinary responsibilities for a woman in her early twenties at Freedom. She became the youngest editor and even fufilled international speaking engagements for Robeson after his passport was revoked by McCarthy Era Congress' HUAC. During this time she also traveled to Jackson, Mississippi to protest execution of Willie McGee. There she wrote a poem called "Lynchsong"

I can hear Rosalee

See the eyes of Willie McGee

My mother told me about

Lynchings

My mother told me about

The dark nights

And dirt roads

And torch lights

And lynch robes

The

faces of men

Laughing white

Faces of men

Dead in the night

sorrow night

and a

sorrow night

Hansberry would go on to give speeches, organize rallies, and events all geared to freedom and equality for all. She was not only concerned with resisting, she was interested in radicalizing and she demanded all those around her to do the same and became heavily involved with SNCC and other organizations. It was on the picket line that she met Robert Nemiroff, a young Jewish songwriter with a passion for social justice that equaled hers. Despite assumptions that she was gay as evidenced by her work with the Daughters of Bilitis, the first lesbian rights organisation in the USA, and her published letters in The Ladder, a lesbian magazine, the couple's shared interests brought them together and the two married on 20 June 1953 and settled in Greenwich Village. Both worked several odd jobs to support themselves. When in 1956, Nemiroff's song "Cindy, Oh Cindy", recorded by Vince Martin and the Terriers reached the Top 40, Hansberry was able to quit her jobs and focus solely on writing. She began writing a play called "The Crystal Stair" which would become A Raisin in the Sun.

The play was completed in 1957 and she read the renamed script to producer Philip Rose who tapped Llyod Richards to direct and Sidney Portier to star. No play by a Black female playwright had ever been produced on Broadway before and it took more than a year for them to raise the money to produce it. In that time the play previewed in New Haven, Philadelphia and Chicago to rave reviews. On March 11, 1959 the play moved to the Ethel Barrymore Theatre - making Lorraine and Raisin and critical success and a Broadway first.

What had drawn Lorraine to the theatre in the first place - the ability for specific dramas to universalize the human experience as had Sean O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock, one of the first plays she saw at The University of Wisconsin - she was now being lauded for. White audiences raved that A Raisin in the Sun was "not really a negro play – it could be about anybody. It’s a play about people!” and Black audiences had a chance to see something completely new - the perfectly ordinary lives of perfectly ordinary folk who looked and sounded and existed just like them on the largest stages in the country. Lorraine would become the first Black woman to win a New York Drama Critics' Circle Award and was immediately commissioned by NBC to write a new teleplay about the slave experience. This film would never be made, as NBC saw it as too controversial but the rights to A Raisin in the Sun were bought by Colombia Pictures and her screenplay, which had to also be edited to omit new, controversial scenes, became a Cannes Film Festival favorite and was nominated for a SAG Award for Best Screenplay.

The success of A Raisin in the Sun brought not only fame and recognition, but a new circle of friends which included artists like Harry Belafonte, Nina Simone and her dearest friend James Baldwin. Along with these friends, she continued to create art and activism that sought to free the people of America from racism and homophobia. This group, along with others, met with Attorney General Bobby Kennedy and beseeched him to aid in the Civil Rights Movement. This meeting would ultimately be a disappointment for all involved and stir up controversy for several of the attending artists - but she was no stranger to political controversy as she had been being monitered by the FBI for years and had even had her passport revoked along with Paul Robeson for suspected Communist ties.

Lorraine was a dedicated freedom fighter and revolutionary, who did not shy from a fight with the American goverment or the American people and A Raisin in the Sun not only gave her a larger platform for protest and resistence, it was an act of resistence itself.

"Do I remain a revolutionary? Intellectually - without a doubt. But am I prepared to give my body to the struggle or even my comforts...I think when I get my health back, I shall go into the South ot find out what kind of revolutionary I am."

Lorraine wrote these words in the summer of 1964 and she would never make that trip. Just a few months later, she passed away from cancer at the age of 34 on January 12, 1965. Having been left in charge of her literary estate, her then ex-husband Robert Nemiroff (the couple amicably split in 1964) saw to the publication of her incomplete works and crafted To Be Young Gifted and Black based on her writings which opened at the Cherry Lane Theatre in 1969.

Lorainne's way paving achievements bolstered Black American theatre in ways that no other writer's work had ever before. Over 600 black theatre companies sprang up across the USA between 1964 and 1974 and in 1970, No Place to Be Somebody written by Charles Gordone became the first African American play to win a Pulitzer Prize. This would not have been possible without the contributions "Sweet Lorraine" - as James Baldwin called her - made to the American Theatre.

A Raisin in the Sun (1959)

A Raisin in the Sun, screenplay (1961)

"On Summer" (essay) (1960)

The Drinking Gourd (1960)

What Use Are Flowers? (written c. 1962)

The Arrival of Mr. Todog – parody of Waiting for Godot

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)

Toussaint. This fragment from a work in progress, unfinished at the time of 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.)

1930 - Born May 19 in Chicago, IL to Carl Sr. and Nannie Hansberry

1940 - Carl Sr., along with help from the NAACP, wins his Supreme Court case Hansberry vs. Lee - this case about housing discrimination will become the framework for A Raisin in the Sun

1946 - When Lorraine is 16 years old, Carl Sr. passes away in Mexico while planning to move his family there to avoid American racism

1948 - Is admitted to and attends The University of Wisconsin where she becomes the chairperson of the Young Progressives

1950 - Decides not to return to The University of Wisconsin and moves to NYC where she takes a job at Paul Robeson's Freedom magazine

1951 - Joins a delegation of women in Jackson, Mississippi to stop the execution of Willie McGee, a Black man accused of rape

1952 - Becomes the associate editor of Freedom; travels to Uruguay to attend the Intercontinental Peace Conference in Paul Robeson's stead because his passport has been revoked by HUAC - as a result, Lorraine's passport is then revoked; meets future husband Robert Nemiroff

1953 - Marries Robert Nemiroff on June 20 and moves to Greenwich Village. Teaches black literature at Jefferson School of Social Science

1954 - Writes script for Harlem rally "Pules of the Peoples: A Cultural Salute to Paul Robeson"

1956 - Nemiroff's song "Cindy, Oh Cindy" becomes a hit, enabling Hansberry to quit her several jobs and focus on writing full time; she begins work on "The Crystal Stair" which will become A Raisin in the Sun

1957 - Completes A Raisin in the Sun which becomes backed by Philip Rose, directed by Lloyd Richards and will star Sidney Poitier; begins writing anonymous letters to The Ladder, a lesbian publication

1959 - After opening in New Haven, Philadelphia and Chicago to rave reviews, A Raisin in the Sun moves to the Ethel Barrymore on March 11, becoming the first play written by a Black woman to be produced on Broadway. Raisin wins the New York Critics Circle Award - also a Black female first. Becomes friends with writer James Baldwin

1960 - Columbia Pictures secures the rights to a screen adaptation which Hansberry writes and is forced to edit after her draft is much more controversial than the stage version; She is commissioned then by NBC to write The Drinking Gourd, which is never produced; begins work on what will become The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window and Les Blancs.

1961 - A Raisin in the Sun is nominated for a SAG Award for best screenplay; receives an award at the Cannes Film Festival

1962 - Works with SNCC; speaks out against the Cuban Missile Crisis and HUAC; completes What Use are Flowers? which is never produced

1963 - Joins several other artists and activists including James Baldwin, Rip Torn, Harry Belafonte and Lena Horne at a meeting with Attorney General Bobby Kennedy where he refuses to ask his brother, President John F. Kennedy to intervene in the desegregation of Southern schools; is diagnosed with cancer in April

1964 -Hansberry and Nemiroff quietly and amicably divorce; Delivers the "To Be Young, Gifted and Black" speech to the winners of the United Negro College Fund writing competition; Publishes The Movement: Documentary of a Struggle for Equality, leaving all proceeds to SNCC; The Sign in Sidney Brustien's Window opens at the Longacre Theatre to mixed reviews

1965 - On January 12, the same day as closing of Sidney Brustein, Lorraine Hansberry dies at age 34.

1967 - "Lorraine Hansberry in Her Own Words" a WBAI radio tribute broadcast in NY, LA and San Francisco

1969 - To Be Young, Gifted and Black opens at the Cherry Lane Theatre

1970 - Les Blancs opens at the Longacre Theatre