Lorraine Hansberry

Lorraine Hansberry (May 19, 1930 – January 12, 1965) was an American playwright and painter. Her drama A Raisin in the Sun (first performed in 1959) was the first drama written by a black woman to be produced on Broadway, and was the winner of the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for best Broadway play of the 1958-1959 season. In 2004, A Raisin in the Sun received a Broadway revival earning Tony Awards for Phylicia Rashad and Audra McDonald. Hansberry grew up on the South Side of Chicago, in the neighborhood of Woodlawn.

Biography

Lorraine Hansberry was born in Chicago in 1930, the youngest child of Carl and Nannie Perry Hansberry. Her parents were politically active Republicans who bequeathed their Afrocentric ideology to their daughter. (At The Time, A Majority of Blacks Voted Republican) Her father was a real estate broker.

Related Topics:
Republicans - Afrocentric - Broker

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Hansberry grew up in a white, middle-class neighborhood and attended public school. Her family frequently faced the threats of racist mobs.

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Hansberry attended the University of Wisconsin and worked on the staff of Freedom magazine. She married Robert Nemiroff, a Jewish literature student, in 1953. They separated in 1957. Hansberry wrote articles for "The Ladder," the first lesbian publication in the United States.

Related Topics:
University of Wisconsin - Freedom - Robert Nemiroff - 1953 - 1957 - Lesbian

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Her 1959 play A Raisin in the Sun made her the first black woman to win the New York Drama Critics' Circle's Best Play award. The play has become a classic.

Related Topics:
1959 - A Raisin in the Sun - New York Drama Critics' Circle

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Hansberry died of cancer on January 12, 1965 at the age of thirty-four. "

Related Topics:
The Sign in Sydney Brustein's Window" - Robert Nemiroff - To Be Young, Gifted and Black - Off-Broadway - 1968 - 1969 - Novel

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