Writer Lorraine Hansberry
First African-American Woman to write a Broadway-Produced Play
Oct 20, 2009
When Lorraine Hansberry was eight years old, she and her family moved into a white neighborhood in Chicago with a restrictive covenant. There are different types of restrictive covenants governing real estate but this one was designed specifically to discourage minorities from purchasing property. The Hansberry family was harassed by racists but refused to move until a court ordered them to do so.
Taking Action Against Discrimination
Hansberry’s father, Carl Hansberry, was a successful real estate broker and took their case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in Hansberry vs. Lee. Although the Supreme Court ruled restrictive covenants to be illegal, this did not prevent the enforcement of the covenants in Chicago.
The experience was fodder for Hansberry’s writing, particularly her play, “A Raisin in the Sun.”
Hansberry attended public schools even though her parents could afford to send her to private schools. But Hansberry’s parents were activists in the African-American community in Chicago and refused to bow to segregation.
After public school, Hansberry attended the University of Wisconsin for a short period of time. She left the university to move to New York and worked as an editor for the black newspaper “Freedom.” In 1953 while in New York, she married Robert Nemiroff, a white Jewish intellectual and songwriter. They met while protesting black athletes’ exclusion from sports.
Hansberry left “Freedom” to focus more on her writing. She was working as a waitress when Nemiroff’s song “Cindy, Oh, Cindy” became successful, allowing Hansberry to write full time.
A Raisin in the Sun Plot
Loosely based upon their civil rights experience, “A Raisin in the Sun” centers around the Younger family in Chicago. Walter Lee wants to use his father’s life insurance money to open a liquor store with the hope of a better life than a limousine driver. His mother wants to use the money to buy a house and send her daughter, Beneatha, to college. She relents to Walter Lee‘s wishes, using part of the money as a down payment on a house, part of it to set aside for Beneatha’s education and the rest she gives to Walter Lee for the store. However, Walter Lee’s money is stolen by a con artist. The house Mrs. Younger put a down payment on is in an all-white neighborhood and Mr. Lindner ,who represents the neighborhood, tries to buy them out.
The title of the play was taken from the Langston Hughes poem “Harlem”: “What happens to a dream deferred?/Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?/Or fester like a sore-/and then run?”
The play opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on March 11, 1959. It won the New York Drama Critic’s Circle Award as Best Play of the Year. Hansberry was the fifth woman and the first African-American to win the award.
When the 1961 film version of “A Raisin in the Sun” was made, actors Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee, Claudia McNeil, John Fiedler, Ivan Dixon and Louis Gossett, Jr. reprised their roles from the play. Dee was awarded the National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress. Poitier and McNeil received nominations for Golden Globe Awards and director Daniel Petrie was given a “Gary Cooper Award” at the Cannes Film Festival.
After A Raisin in the Sun
The Hansberry family was accused of being slumlords in Chicago. This bad publicity overshadowed the success of Hansberry’s play. Hansberry’s marriage was also experiencing difficulties. All this prompted the Hansberry family to move to Los Angeles. Hansberry and Nemiroff were divorced in 1964.
Hansberry was commissioned to write “The Drinking Gourd” for the National Broadcasting Company in 1959. Dealing with the American slave system, the story was considered to controversial for television and was never produced.
“The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window” was produced in New York in 1964. Having been diagnosed with cancer by the time the play ran on Broadway, Hansberry was in and out of hospitals, often attending rehearsals in a wheelchair. The play had 101 performances and closed the night Hansberry died, January 12, 1965.
Hansberry’s “To Be Young, Gifted and Black: An Informal Autobiography” was published by Signet in 1970.
Nemiroff, along with Charlotte Zaltzberg, adapted “A Raisin in the Sun” as a musical, “Raisin.” “Raisin” won the Tony Award as the best musical in 1973 and ran on Broadway for almost three years. It was revived in 1981 with Claudia McNeil once again reprising her role from the original play.
Nemiroff also compiled Hansberry’s last three plays - “Les Blancs,” “The Drinking Gourd,” and “What Use Are Flowers?” - in a collection “Les Blancs: The Collected Last Plays” published by Vintage in 1994.
Sources:
Voices from the Gap, University of Minnesota
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