Lorraine Vivian Hansberry

Lorraine Vivian Hansberry was a playwright, writer, and activist. She was the first African American female author to have a play performed on Broadway, her best-known work, A Raisin in the Sun (1959). At age twenty-nine, Hansberry was the youngest person and the first African American playwright to win the New York Drama Critics Award. 

Born in Chicago to a politically active family, she experienced racism early on when her family moved into a previously segregated neighborhood and was confronted with violence. She studied at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she first became involved in theater and writing for the stage, and the New School for Social Research (now the New School University). In 1950, she moved to New York City, where she became involved in activist struggles, such as the fight against evictions. In 1951, Hansberry joined the staff of the Black newspaper Freedom, edited by Louis E. Burnham and published by Paul Robeson. At Freedom, she wrote articles and theater reviews. She also worked with W. E. B. Du Bois and other Black Pan-Africanists. 

Written and completed in 1957, A Raisin in the Sun opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on March 11, 1959. With its title derived from the poem “Harlem” (also known as “A Dream Deferred”) by Langston Hughes, the play describes the struggles of a Black family in Chicago’s South Side as they attempt to improve their financial circumstances with an insurance payout following the death of their father, and deals with housing discrimination, racism, and assimilation. The New York Drama Critics’ Circle named it the best play of 1959, and it was also nominated for four Tony Awards, including for Best Play, in 1960. Over the following two years, Raisin was translated into thirty-five languages and was performed all over the world. 

A posthumous compilation of her letters, speeches, and unpublished writing, To Be Young, Gifted and Black: An Informal Autobiography, was published in 1969 with an introduction by her friend James Baldwin. She has been posthumously inducted into the LGBT Hall of Fame, Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, American Theatre Hall of Fame, and the National Women’s Hall of Fame.