From these two facts, one can conclude that Hansberry’s reason for writing A Raisin in the Sun was to tell her story of “Dreams Deferred”, to expose the truth of the African American family life and racism, and the struggles of reaching a dream, all from a first hand experience perspective.

Hansberry was inspired by the South Side’s vibrant cultural scene—which included writers Richard Wright and Gwendolyn Brooks—as well as its political activism. Perry says many people overlook just how political Hansberry was—and just how radical.

Hansberry was the first Black playwright and the youngest American to win a New York Critics’ Circle award. Throughout her life she was heavily involved in civil rights. She died at 34 of pancreatic cancer.

Lorraine Vivian Hansberry (May 19, 1930 – January 12, 1965) was a playwright and writer. She was the first African-American female author to have a play performed on Broadway. Her best known work, the play A Raisin in the Sun, highlights the lives of Black Americans living under racial segregation in Chicago.

8 Fascinating Facts About Lorraine Hansberry

• She first Black woman to have a play staged on Broadway.
• Her father was a plaintiff in a Supreme Court housing case.
• Nina Simone dedicated a song to her.
• Hansberry was an advocate for gay rights.
• She addressed social issues in her writings.

34 years (1930–1965)

Hansberry obtained a divorce from Nemiroff on March 10, 1964 in Juarez, Mexico, on grounds of incompatability. In this divorce it was the wife who was divided up: Nemiroff got the writer; Secules the woman.

It is unclear how Claude died in the play A Raisin in the Sun. The child’s death occurs before the events of the play; Mama attributes the loss of…

“She was a feminist before the feminist movement. She identified as a lesbian and thought about LGBT organizing before there was a gay rights movement. She was an anti-colonialist before independences had been won in Africa and the Caribbean.”

The Crystal Stair

The New School

Jan

She was the first African American woman to have a show produced on Broadway, the first black playwright and the youngest American to receive, in 1959, the prestigious New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best American Play, and the first African American to win the distinguished Drama Desk Award.

Angry white people tried to intimidate the family, and one day when Lorraine was only 8 years old, someone threw a brick through a window of the house and almost hit her.

Hansberry then waged a three-year legal battle for the right to live in his home. The case, Hansberry vs. Lee, resulted in a 1940 Supreme Court decision that helped to end racially discriminatory housing covenants across the city of Chicago.

Chicago, Illinois, United States

James Mercer Langston Hughes (February 1, 1901 – May 22, 1967) was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist from Joplin, Missouri. One of the earliest innovators of the literary art form called jazz poetry, Hughes is best known as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance.

Domestic drama

Robert B. Nemiroffm. 1953–1962

Hansberry’s 1959 success with Raisin gave her a prominent voice in the struggle for black liberation. She delivered this speech at the Town Hall forum in 1964. The memory of her father’s failure to shake segregation through legal means shaped her plea for action.

The play’s title is taken from “Harlem,” a poem by Langston Hughes, which examines the question “What happens to a dream deferred?/Does it dry up/like a raisin in the sun?” This penetrating psychological study of a working-class black family on the south side of Chicago in the late 1940s reflected Hansberry’s own …

Since he is still young, his dream is made up of other peoples’ thoughts and visions for him. Although there are no specifics, it is clear that the family does not want Travis to be an adult laborer like his father. They want him to have a job that offers opportunities for respect and advancement.

South Side

The events of the play, which portrays an African-American family’s effort to improve their lives by buying a home in a racially restricted neighborhood, are based on true events to a degree not fully appreciated by many theatergoers (or at least this one).

Lorraine Hansberry wrote this drama, becoming the first African American woman to have a play produced on Broadway in 1959. Set in the 1950s, Hansberry’s work addresses the racial and gender issues that occurred then and still ring true today.

1957

Lorraine Hansberry

A Raisin in the Sun portrays a few weeks in the life of the Youngers, an Black family living on the South Side of Chicago in the 1950s. When the play opens, the Youngers are about to receive an insurance check for $10,000. This money comes from the deceased Mr. Younger’s life insurance policy.