Lorraine Hansberry: A Legacy of Dreams and Challenges

1. A Dream DeferredWhat happens to a dream deferred?Does it dry upLike a raisin in the sun?Or fester like a sore--And then run?Does it stink like rotten meat?Or crust and sugar over--like a syrupy sweet?Maybe it just sagslike a heavy load.Or does it explode —Langston Hughes Lorraine Hansberry 1930-1965

2. Early life born into a middle-class Chicago family on May 19, 1930. Her parents, Nannie Perry Hansberry and Carl A. Hansberry active proponents of civil rights. .

3. Early life cont • As a child, Hansberry witnessed father’s participation in challenging segregation • Father worked with the NAACP and the Urban League. • Attempts continued in the political arena when he ran for Congress

4. Background of Raisin • Father’s most aggressive move to relocate family into a white neighborhood in Chicago. • As a result, the family’s home was vandalized and on one occasion Hansberry was injured. • father, determined to fight residential segregation, brought legal action with help of the NAACP. • he won the case, but residential segregation continued in Chicago.

5. Personal life • In 1953, she met Robert Nemiroff while they were picketing against discrimination of black athletes • married Nemiroff, Jewish writer • worked as a waitress and cashier writing in her spare time. • 1956 she quit working; devoted time to her writing.

6. PERSONAL LIFE (CONT) 1963, diagnosed with pancreatic cancer 1964, Hansberry’s marriage ended in divorce. For the next two years, Hansberry battled cancer with chemotherapy and radiation, while at the same time continuing to write. January 12, 1965, Hansberry died.

7. Education • In protest to segregation parents sent her to public schools rather than private • attended Betsy Ross Elementary School ; predominantly white • had to fight racism from the day she walked through the doors of Betsy Ross Elementary School • in 1944, she was enrolled in Englewood High School; predominantly white (Nemiroff 20). • broke the family tradition of enrolling in Southern Negro Colleges and enrolled in the University of Wisconsin for two years • left early to pursue a career

8. Professional life • Became associate editor in New York City based newspaper, Freedom Radical black paper founded by Paul Robeson. • Youngest writer and first African American to win New York Drama Critics Circle Award • Wrote The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, written about Jews after World War II, • Play opened in the theater in 1963. Closed the day she died.

9. Raisin in the Sun debuts • On March 11, 1959, A Raisin in the Sun, Broadway opening • Lorraine Hansberry and producer Philip Rose sat in fourth row of the Ethel Barrymore Theatre • Did not anticipate success. • production had long road to opening • met with a lukewarm reception at a preview night before. • Neither foresaw play's triumph, or role it would play in Black American culture

10. Hansberry says… On her purpose in writing Raisin-- to show "the many gradations in even one Negro family.“ “It will help people to understand how we are just as complicated as they are—and just as mixed up, but above all that we have among our miserable and downtrodden ranks people who are the very essence of human dignity. That is, after all the laughter and the tears, what the play is supposed to say. On life—”Never be afraid to sit awhile and think”

11. And the critics say… • "She has told the inner as well as the outer truths about a Negro family in Chicago. The play has vigor as well as veracity and is likely to destroy the complacency of anyone who sees it.” • Hansberry “changed American theater forever [by forcing] both blacks and white to re-examine the deferred dreams of black America [and by posing] all her concerns in a work that portrayed a black family with greater realism and complexity than had ever been previously seen on an American stage" Frank Rich NY Times Drama critic • “Lorraine made no bones about asserting that art has a purpose, and that its purpose was action: that it contained the ‘energy which could change things.’” • –American novelist and essayist James Baldwin

12. To Be Young, Gifted, and Black • “And that is why I say to you that, though it be a thrilling and marvelous thing to be merely young and gifted in such times, it is doubly so, doubly dynamic—to be young, gifted and black. • Look at the world that awaits you!”

13. Raisin in the Sun Setting—South Side of Chicago after WWII Main characters—Younger family Mama Walter, Jr. Beneatha Ruth Travis Joseph Asagai

14. Plot synopsis Walter Sr. has died and left insurance money ($10,000) to family Family awaits check Each member dreams of what he/she would do with the money