Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965) wrote A Raisin in the Sun using inspiration from her years growing up in the segregated South Side of Chicago. 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 The Hansberry family had many friends and relatives that were involved in the arts. Hansberry and Simone had been friends and shared a bond over their interests in social justice and radical politics. She was also the youngest playwright and the first Black winner of the prestigious Drama Critics Circle Awardfor Best Play. Her friend Nina Simone said, we never talked about men or clothes or other such inconsequential things when we got together. She was born to Carl Augustus Hansberry and Nonnie Louise. Lorraine Hansberry, likely at a welcoming event for the African-American Students Foundation in 1959. She was also nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play, among the four Tony Awards that the play was nominated for in 1960. The American dream means something different to each character in A Raisin in the Sun. 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. Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965) was born on this day, May 19. This week, Basic Black discusses legendary playwright Lorraine Hansberry, who wrote 'A Raisin in the Sun.' Panelists: Lisa Simmons, director of the Roxbury I. AboutPressCopyrightContact. Hansberry was associated with very important people. We may all come from different walks of life but we have one common passion - learning through travel. Lorraine Hansberry was an avid civil rights activist because she understood clearly, that people need a champion in this life. Like Robeson and many black civil rights activists, Hansberry understood the struggle against white supremacy to be interlinked with the program of the Communist Party. 'The Black Revolution and the White Backlash . Clybourne Park is a "spin-off" of Lorraine Hansberry's famous 1959 play, A Raisin in the Sun, meaning that it centers around some of the play's peripheral events and characters.Specifically, the main characters of A Raisin in the Sun the Younger familywill eventually move into the house in which Clybourne Park is set. In Perrys words, this moment captures the tension . Lorraine Vivian Hansberry was born May 19, 1930 at the beginning of the Great Depression. She explored the issues of colonialism and imperialism through her own lens as well as the female perspective. It ran for 101 performances on Broadway and closed the night she died. And how amazing that she had already accomplished so much. Lorraine was graceful, poised, and elegant (journalists and critics always also seemed to mention her petite frame or collegiate style), but could be icy and confrontational when the situation demandedand sometimes it was demanded. | 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. The late artist also has a school, Lorraine Hansberry Academy, in the Bronx named after her as well as an elementary school in Queen, New York, titled in her honor. In the whole world you know Book Details. The local Chicago government was willing to eject the Hansberrys from their new home but Lorraine's father, Carl Hansberry, took their case to court. It was with those friends and Nemiroff that she kept a secret about the pancreatic cancer that would eventually take her life on January 12, 1965, at age 34. She was an anti-colonialist before independence had been won in Africa and the Caribbean.. Baldwin remembers: Her face changed and changed, the way Sojourner Truth's face must have changed and changed . Gift of Kayla Deigh Owens, Playbill used by permission. The group of 1960's would-be idealists, iconoclasts and intellectuals who hang out in the Greenwich Village apartment of Sidney and Iris Brustein (Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan) include a painter, This gave her a platform for sharing her views. Simone penned the song Young, Gifted and Black in tribute to her good friend, View objects relating to Lorraine Hansberry, Get the latest information about timed passes and tips for planning your visit, Search the collection and explore our exhibitions, centers, and digital initiatives, Online resources for educators, students, and families, Engage with us and support the Museum from wherever you are, Find our upcoming and past public and educational programs, Learn more about the Museum and view recent news. 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. Kicks. Lorraine Hansberry is best known as the playwright of A Raisin In The Sun, the groundbreaking play about a working class African-American family on the South Side of Chicago that illustrates how the American Dream is limited for Black Americans.The play is widely hailed as one of the greatest-ever achievements in theater. A Raisin in the Sun: Key Facts | SparkNotes The play was the first one to be produced on Broadway by an African-American woman and won an award at the Cannes Film Festival when its motion picture came out. Tone Realistic. Hansberry's funeral was held in Harlem on January 15, 1965. Simone wrote the song with the poet Weldon Irvine and told him that she wanted lyrics that would "make black children all over the world feel good about themselves forever." Race & Ethnicity in America . Hansberry was born in Chicago, Illinois and grew up in a family that was deeply involved in the civil rights movement. 519 (1934), had been similar to his situation. Lorraine Vivian Hansberry (May 19, 1930 - January 12, 1965) was a playwright and writer. Hansberry was raised in an African-American middle-class family with activist foundations. Her promising career was cut short by her early death from pancreatic cancer. According to historian Fanon Che Wilkins, "Hansberry believed that gaining civil rights in the United States and obtaining independence in colonial Africa were two sides of the same coin that presented similar challenges for Africans on both sides of the Atlantic." Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. She worked on Henry A. Wallace's Progressive Party presidential campaign in 1948, despite her mother's disapproval. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. In the same year, her second play, The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window, was released on Broadway but was unable to become a major hit. Lorraine Hansberry is often viewed as a visionary because of her ability to predict many of the relevant issues to the African-American community today. Lorraine Hansberry - Biography and Literary Works of Lorraine Hansberry James Baldwin wrote the introduction to Hansberrys biography, Literary Ladies Guide to the Writing Life. . Lorraine Hansberry's Gay Politics - The Root 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.". This is her earliest remaining theatrical work. Full title A Raisin in the Sun. This article is about the top 10 interesting facts about Lorraine Hansberry. Hansberry originally wanted to be an artist when she attended the University of Wisconsin, but soon changed her focus to study drama and stage design. Lorraine Hansberry's ex-husband and dear friend, the songwriter and poet Robert Nemiroff, became her literary executor after her death in 1965. A documentary has been made about her writing, Filmmaker Tracy Heather Strain is so taken with Lorraines work that she put together a powerful documentary so people would know who she was and what she stood for. Hansberry was the youngest American, fifth woman and first black to win the award. This page was last modified on 24 February 2023, at 15:15. 'A Raisin in the Sun' Reveals Playwright Lorraine Hansberry's Black Hansberry attended the University of Wisconsin in Madison in the late 1940s, but she left before completing her degree. She was raised in a strong family, the youngest of three children born to Nannie Perry Hansberry and Carl Augustus Hansberry. She used her writing to redefine difference. In 1959, Hansberry made history as the first African American woman to have a show produced on BroadwayA Raisin in the Sun. Follow her on Twitter at@emilykpowers. At first Sideways Stories from Wayside School was not a popular book in US. Fact 5: Indeed, Lorraine was an outspoken political activist from a young age. How could we improve it? It was a critical time in the history of the civil rights movement. She died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 34. Read all About It. Progressive Education Hansberry was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1930. Lorraine Vivian Hansberry (May 19, 1930 - January 12, 1965) was a playwright and writer. Hansberry received many awards for her work, including a New York Critics' Circle Award, an award at the Cannes Film Festival. James 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.". It seems, in fact, that, as with her dear friend the author James Baldwin, Hansberry is having a curiously vibrant renaissance some 54 years after her death, at the age of thirty-four from pancreatic cancer, on January 12, 1965. Lorraine Hansberry (May 19, 1930-January 12, 1965) was a playwright, essayist, and civil rights activist. She is a graduate of Le Moyne College.