Image by The Public Domain Review from Wikimedia. Lorraine Hansberry was one of the most brilliant minds to pass through the American theater, a model of that virtually extinct species known as the artist-activist . This script was called "superb" but also rejected. Hansberry wrote her first play, The Crystal Stair, during the same period, based on a struggling family in Chicago. She also had several close relationships with women throughout her life, including a long-term relationship with a woman named Una Mulzac. In 2013, more than twenty years after Nemiroff's death, the new executor released the restricted material to scholar Kevin J. Mumford. Lorraine Hansberry (1930 - 1965) was an American playwright and author best known for A Raisin in the Sun, a 1959 play influenced by her background and upbringing in Chicago. She was the daughter of a real estate entrepreneur, Carl Hansberry, and schoolteacher, Nannie Hansberry, as well as the niece of Pan-Africanist scholar and college professor Leo Hansberry. Hansberry's funeral was held in Harlem on January 15, 1965. Image by Unknown Author from Wikimedia. Written when she was just twenty-eight, Lorraine Hansberry's landmark A Raisin in the Sun is listed . 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. . . Open your heart to what I mean Hansberry resided in a third-floor apartment in this building from 1953 to 1960, the period in which she created her . The title is found in the PBS new American Masters category under Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart. In the documentary youll discover that Hansberry truly spoke truth to power.. Born Lorraine Vivian Hansberry, May 19, 1930, in Chicago, IL; died of cancer, January 12, 1965; daughter of Carl Augustus (a real estate entrepreneur) and Nannie (Perry) Hansberry; married Robert Nemiroff, June 20, 1953 (divorced March 10, 1964). The following year, she collaborated with the already produced playwright Alice Childress, who also wrote for Freedom, on a pageant for its Negro History Festival, with Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, Douglas Turner Ward, and John O. Killens. On March 11, 1959, Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun opened on Broadway and changed the face of American theater forever. . Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965) wrote A Raisin in the Sun using inspiration from her years growing up in the segregated South Side of Chicago. For their magazine, the Ladder, Hansberry contributed articles which talked of feminism and homophobia, revealing her homosexual nature. Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965) was a playwright, writer, and activist. Her favorite topics are psychology, sociology, anthropology, history and religion. Race & Ethnicity in America Important Feminists you should know. We get rid of all the little bombsand the big bombs," though she also believed in the right of people to defend themselves with force against their oppressors. Lorraine Vivian Hansberry was born May 19, 1930 at the beginning of the Great Depression. Hansberry's evolving politics were groundbreaking, and many questions remain about how they impacted her workboth plays she wrote after Raisin included gay charactersand how her ideas . Full title A Raisin in the Sun. In 2013, Hansberry was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama, in recognition of her contributions to American culture and civil rights activism. Lorraines mother, Nannie Hansberry, was also active in the struggle for civil rights. Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?" She herself, knew what it was to be discriminated against.. Tone Realistic. Feminism & Gender Lorraines experiences growing up in this environment informed her writing, which often dealt with issues of race, class, and identity. Lorraine Vivian Hansberry (May 19, 1930 - January 12, 1965) was an African-American playwright and writer. The Lorraine Hansberry residence, listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2021, is nationally significant for its association with the pioneering Black lesbian playwright, writer, and activist, Lorraine Hansberry. She spent the summer of 1949 in Mexico, studying painting at the University of Guadalajara. Hansberry kept a low profile of her identity as a lesbian. Her promising career was cut short by her early death frompancreatic cancer. The play opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on March 11, 1959, and was a great success. Your email address will not be published. Both Hansberry's were active in the Chicago Republican Party. The thing I tried to show was the many gradations in even one Negro family, the clash of the old and the new, but most of all the unbelievable courage of the Negro people.. The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the highest civilian honour in the United States, awarded by the President to individuals who have made exceptional contributions to the security or national interests of the country, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavours. A Raisin in the Sun was the first play written by an African American woman to be produced on Broadway. It seems illogical that someone who was such a font of creativity, so full of life and laughter and accomplishments, had such a tragically short life. To support our blog and writers we put affiliate links and advertising on our page. She was raised in a strong family, the youngest of three children born to Nannie Perry Hansberry and Carl Augustus Hansberry. Hansberry's classmate Bob Teague remembered her as "the only girl I knew who could whip together a fresh picket sign with her own hands, at a moment's notice, for any cause or occasion". Near the end of her life, she declared herself "committed [to] this homosexuality thing" and vowing to "create my lifenot just accept it". To celebrate the newspaper's first birthday, Hansberry wrote the script for a rally at Rockland Palace, a then-famous Harlem hall, on "the history of the Negro newspaper in America and its fighting role in the struggle for a people's freedom, from 1827 to the birth of FREEDOM." Religion Even though her disease brought her career to an abrupt halt, Lorraine Hansberry continues to be remembered through the paintings and writings which she worked on in the early years of her career. The play was also nominated for four Tony Awards, including Best Play, and it has since become a classic of American theatre. Lorraine Hansberry, (born May 19, 1930, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.died January 12, 1965, New York, New York), American playwright whose A Raisin in the Sun (1959) was the first drama by an African American woman to be produced on Broadway. Hansberrys contributions to American theatre and literature have had a lasting impact, and her work continues to be studied and performed today. She identified as a lesbian and thought about LGBT organizing before there was a gay rights movement. Lorraine Hansberry has many notable relatives including director and playwright Shauneille Perry, whose eldest child is named after her. Tell us what's wrong with this post? Biography & MemoirDisability Baldwin remembers: Her face changed and changed, the way Sojourner Truth's face must have changed and changed . Date of first publication 1959. The show ran for more than two years and won two Tony Awards, including Best Musical. 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. Fact 5: Indeed, Lorraine was an outspoken political activist from a young age. Publisher Random House. . Lorraine Hansberry was the youngest of four children born to Carl Augustus Hansberry, a successful real-estate broker and Nannie Louise (born Perry), a driving school teacher and ward committeewoman. Imani Perrys Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry is a watershed biography of the award-winning playwright, activist, and artist Lorraine Hansberry. . Leo Hansberry was a prominent figure in the Pan-Africanist movement, and he founded the African Civilization section at Howard University, where he was a professor of African history. 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. In 1938, after her father bought a house in the south side of Chicago, the family was subject to the wrath of their white neighbors, resulting in U.S. Supreme CourtsHansberry v. Leecase. . The youngest of four siblings, she was seven years younger than Mamie, her . Lee, 311 U.S. 32 (1940), to which the playwright Lorraine Hansberry's father was a party, when he fought to have his day in court despite the fact that a previous class action about racially motivated restrictive covenants, Burke v. Kleiman, 277 Ill. App. And thats a fact! It is a play that tells the truth about people, Negroes [in the parlance of the time], and life. Discuss these differences and how they conflict with one another. History In addition to her activism around civil rights, Hansberry was also a feminist and an advocate for womens rights. . This article is about the top 10 interesting facts about Lorraine Hansberry. Her best-known work, the play A Raisin in the Sun, highlights the lives of black Americans in Chicago living under racial segregation. To Be Young, Gifted and Black How could we improve it? September 27, 2022. When Nemiroff donated Hansberry's personal and professional effects to the New York Public Library, he "separated out the lesbian-themed correspondence, diaries, unpublished manuscripts, and full runs of the homophile magazines and restricted them from access to researchers." At the newspaper, she worked as a "subscription clerk, receptionist, typist, and editorial assistant" besides writing news articles and editorials. Hansberry was born in Chicago, Illinois and grew up in a family that was deeply involved in the civil rights movement. She is buried at Asbury United Methodist Church Cemetery in Croton-on-Hudson, New York. Carl Hansberry's brother, William Leo Hansberry, founded the African Civilization section of the History Department at Howard University. Lorraine Hansberry was born on May 19, 1930, in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Heavily damaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, it has since closed. In 1950, Hansberry decided to leave Madison and pursue her career as a writer in New York City, where she attended The New School. Her own familys landmark court case against discriminatory real estate covenants in Chicago would serve as inspiration for her seminal Broadway play, A Raisin in the Sun. Sadly, she passed away from pancreatic cancer on January 12, 1965. Much of her work during this time concerned the African struggles for liberation and their impact on the world. Bella Sanchez is a recent graduate from Boston University, and the marketing intern for Beacon Press. Hansberrys work broke barriers and paved the way for more diverse voices to be heard on the Broadway stage. 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 196869 season. In 1973, a musical based on A Raisin in the Sun, entitled Raisin, opened on Broadway, with music by Judd Woldin, lyrics by Robert Brittan, and a book by Nemiroff and Charlotte Zaltzberg. 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. She reached out to the world through her plays. Genre Realist drama. . She was a member of the National Organization for Women and wrote about womens issues in her personal journals and in her writing. Corrections? Due to racial differences, Lorraine and her family faced racism when she was just eight. She was passionate about the causes and people that she stood in support of. Fact 9: This isnt a major life milestone of Lorraines, but its too fascinating not to include it!) The curtain rises on a dim, drab room. Hansberry received many awards for her work, including a New York Critics' Circle Award, an award at the Cannes Film Festival. April 14, 2021. . It aired recently on PBS and if you didnt catch it, you can find out more. Hansberry joined CORE in the late 1950s and became involved in various civil rights campaigns, including the fight against housing discrimination in Chicago. Who Was Lorraine Hansberry? On June 9, 2022, the Lilly Awards Foundation unveiled a statue of Hansberry in Times Square. . James Baldwin wrote the introduction to Hansberrys biography, Literary Ladies Guide to the Writing Life. A Raisin in the Sun marked the turning point for black artists in professional theater. Posted at 04:07 PM in Beacon Staff, Biography and Memoir, Emily Powers, Imani Perry, Literature and the Arts, Looking for Lorraine, Queer Perspectives, Race and Ethnicity in America | Permalink Theatre Nation Partnerships network extends to every region in England. The award-winning playwright whose 90th birthday would have been this week first captured the public eye during the civil rights movement. In 2008, the production was adapted for television with the same cast, winning two NAACP Image Awards. The granddaughter of a freed slave, Lorraine Vivian Hansberry was born on May 19, 1930, to a successful real estate broker and a school teacher who resided in Chicago, Illinois. 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. In the book, readers get bits and pieces of Perry, too, as she describes her journey with Lorraine, detailing her thoughts as both an admirer, and a biographer. The title of the play was taken from the poem "Harlem" by Langston Hughes: "What happens to a dream deferred? She attended the University of Wisconsin in 194850 and then briefly the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Roosevelt University (Chicago). If people know anything about Lorraine (Perry refers to her as Lorraine throughout the book, explaining why she does so), theyll recall she was the author of A Raisin in the Sun, an award-winning play about a family dealing with issues of race, class, education, and identity in Chicago. 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. She was also an active participant in the civil rights movement, and her writings and speeches inspired many people to take action against racial inequality and injustice. Along these lines, she wrote a critical review of Richard Wright's The Outsider and went on to style her final play Les Blancs as a foil to Jean Genet's absurdist Les Ngres. Discover the life of Lorraine Hansberry, who reported on civil rights for Paul Robeson's newspaper Freedom and later penned "A Raisin in the Sun". Hansberry was the youngest American, fifth woman and first black to win the award. Her father founded Lake Street Bank, one of the first banks for blacks in Chicago, and ran a successful real estate business. Her other works include the plays The Sign in Sidney Brusteins Window and Les Blancs, as well as several essays and articles on civil rights and social justice issues. After moving to New York City, she held various minor jobs and studied at theNew School for Social Researchwhile refining her writing skills. Hansberry was a closeted lesbian. We followed her. (James Baldwin, The Cross of Redemption). This money comes from the deceased Mr. Younger's life insurance policy. In 1959 her play A Raisin in the Sun opened on Broadway, an important theater district in New York City. Happy travels! Hansberry wrote two screenplays of Raisin, both of which were rejected as controversial by Columbia Pictures. . The African-American historian and scholar who is best known for his research on African history and culture. Later, Hansberry would maintain her own close bonds with Du Bois, Robeson, Langston Hughes, and James Baldwin. To Be Young, Gifted and Black was a posthumously produced play and collection of writings that capped a brief and brilliant career. Hansberrys uncle, William Leo Hansberry, founded the Howard University African Civilization section of the history department, her cousin Shauneille Perry is an actress and playwright, and her younger relatives, Taye Hansberry is an actress and Aldridge Hansberry is a composer and flutist. . In 1958 she raised funds to produce her play A Raisin in the Sun, which opened in March 1959 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on Broadway, meeting with great success. Faced . and then "L.N." He was known as a race man who sought to make the world a better place for African Americans. Both of these talented writers wanted to incorporate themes of race and sexual identity into their stage work, something that was considered quite radical at the time. She was particularly interested in the situation of Egypt, "the traditional Islamic 'cradle of civilization,' where women had led one of the most important fights anywhere for the equality of their sex.". Perry truly brings Lorraine to life in this intimate book. Required fields are marked *. 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." Hansberry's. Mumford stated that Hansberry's lesbianism caused her to feel isolated while A Raisin in the Sun catapulted her to fame; still, while "her impulse to cover evidence of her lesbian desires sprang from other anxieties of respectability and conventions of marriage, Hansberry was well on her way to coming out." Upon his ex-wife's death, Robert Nemiroff donated all of Hansberry's personal and professional effects to the New York Public Library. This experience is reflected in Raisin in how unwelcoming the white community was to the Younger family in Clybourne Park. . 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. BA English MEd Adult Ed & Community & Human Resource Development and ABD in PhD studies in Indust & Org Psychology. Since that time, other artists including Aretha Franklin have covered the song, whichbegins: To be young, gifted and black Learn more about Lorraine Hansberry Queer Perspectives Lorraine Hansberry (1930 1965) was an American playwright and author best known for A Raisin in the Sun, a 1959 play influenced by her background and upbringing in Chicago. Among the hates: being asked to speak, cramps, racism, her homosexuality, and silly men. In doing so, he blocked access to all materials related to Hansberry's lesbianism, meaning that no scholars or biographers had access for more than 50 years. . :). The production won Tony Awards for Best Actress in a Play for Rashad and Best Featured Actress in a Play for McDonald, and received a nomination for Best Revival of a Play. 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. Hansberry was a contributor to The Ladder, a predominantly lesbian publication, where she wrote about homophobia and feminism.
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