Lorraine Hansberry 1930to –1965
American playwright, writer, and activist, known for her groundbreaking play A Raisin in the Sun. Her father was a successful real estate broker, and when Lorraine was eight, he bought a house in an all-white Chicago neighborhood. Their new neighbors tormented the family and tried to force them out, an experience that would reemerge in Lorraine’s later work. The resulting case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which eventually ruled in Hansberry’s favor. At 20, Lorraine moved to New York City. She found work at the black publication Freedom Newspaper, met thinkers such as Paul Robeson and W. E. B. Du Bois, and involved herself in both local and global activism. She also met Robert Nemiroff, a white writer and activist. They were married in 1953, and moved to Greenwich Village, where Hansberry began to write full time. As she worked on her play, she also began to turn her intellect toward her own sexuality. She joined the pioneering lesbian organization, The Daughters of Bilitis, and contributed two letters to their publication, The Ladder. Signing only her initials, Hansberry described herself as a “heterosexually married lesbian,” and wrote about the intersectionality of homophobia, misogyny, and racism. On one telling piece of paper where she had written a personal list of likes and dislikes, she placed “my homosexuality” under both categories. By 1957, she and Nemiroff were quietly separated though still close friends, and Hansberry began discreetly dating women. 1957 is also the year she finished A Raisin in the Sun, a play about a black Chicago family at a crossroads. After struggling to get it produced, the play opened on Broadway in 1959, becoming the first Broadway play ever written by a black woman, as well the first to have a black director. It was an immediate success, and Hansberry became the first black woman to win the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award. At only 29 years old, she was also the youngest. She then wrote the screenplay for the Hollywood film adaptation, though she had to fight their censorship at every turn. Sadly, it was only a few years later that Hansberry was diagnosed with cancer. She continued to work despite the pain she was in, writing essays, discussing race relations with Robert Kennedy at James Baldwin’s invitation, starting a number of unfinished works, and completing the play The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, which opened on Broadway in 1964 and closed the night she died. Nina Simone, a close friend, released the song “To Be Young, Gifted and Black” in memory of her short but influential life.