Hansberry, Lorraine

HANSBERRY, LORRAINE (1930–1965). Best remembered for her play A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry was also a talented poet, essayist, feminist, and political activist. In much of her writings, art and politics were inseparable themes. If her impressions of the African American experience provoked controversy, they also revealed universal truths without sacrificing integrity or artistic conviction.

Daughter of a successful Chicago businessman who was unflinching in his quest for civil rights, Hansberry was nurtured in a highly conscious and politically aware household. She was fond of recalling how her determined father, after moving his family into a restricted neighborhood where blacks were unwelcome, proceeded to fight the case all the way to the Supreme Court. Eventually the case resulted in a decision against restrictive covenants and became famous as Hansberry v. Lee. Aspects of this incident are vitally interwoven in A Raisin in the Sun.

At a very early age Hansberry decided on a career as a writer. “I think since I was a child, I have been possessed of the desire to put down the stuff of my life,” she said at the beginning of her book To Be Young, Gifted, and Black. Her ability as a writer flowered right along with her political development. The aspiring writer was nineteen when she attended Paul Robeson’s riot-marred concert at Peekskill, New York, in 1949. Three years later, at a mass meeting in Manhattan, she publicly assailed the witch-hunts of the House Un-American Activities Committee. By the time she was twenty-four, having studied at the University of Wisconsin and the Jefferson School of Social Science, Hansberry, now married to Robert Nemiroff, was active as director of special events at Camp Unity, conducted and attended by leftists and based in upstate New York. It was through her initiative that W.E.B. Du Bois appeared at the camp to speak on political affairs in 1954.

During this period her writing consisted mostly of poetry and occasional journalistic assignments, particularly for Paul Robeson’s newspaper, Freedom. As an activist-journalist, Hansberry moved swiftly from front to front, covering and participating in numerous social and political events. All the while she was honing her skills as a playwright. In 1959 her first play, A Raisin in the Sun, which featured Claudia McNeil and Sidney Poitier, was highly acclaimed, earning her the New York Drama Critics Award, a first for a black playwright. This historic success marked the emergence of a new movement in black theater. “She broke new ground,” observed playwright/actor Douglas Turner Ward, who met Hansberry when she first arrived in New York City in 1950. “She crossed new frontiers … created new possibilities. Her impact and influence upon her own generation and succeeding ones are historic.”

Hansberry, however, was too busy to enjoy her new celebrity. She continued her involvement in the growing civil rights movement, writing articles, marching, speaking at benefits, and when she could, working on her next play. She was, as the late author Julian Mayfield recalled, “living each moment as if it were her last.” Because of this uncommon energy and enthusiasm for life, it was doubly shocking for those who knew her to hear she was stricken with cancer and dead at thirty-four. Hansberry’s short but remarkable life has left an indelible imprint on the world of letters.

Hansberry, Lorraine. Les Blancs: The Collected Last Plays of Lorraine Hansberry. Edited by Robert Nemiroff. New York: Random House, 1972. https://penguinrandomhousehighereducation.com/book/?isbn=9780307815569

Lorraine Hansberry Special Issue. Freedomways, 19 (1979).