[8] Carl died in 1946 when Lorraine was fifteen years old; "American racism helped kill him," she later said.[9]. [12][13] She attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she immediately became politically active with the Communist Party USA and integrated a dormitory. Lorraine Hansberry was born on May 19, 1930, in Chicago, Illinois. In 1961, Hansberry was set to replace Vinnette Carroll as the director of the musical Kicks and Co, after its try-out at Chicago's McCormick Place. A studio recording by Simone was released as a single and the first live recording on October 26, 1969, was captured on Black Gold (1970). She underwent two operations, on June 24 and August 2. Lorraine died at age thirty-four from pancreatic cancer. "In an article titled 'Kenya's Kikuyu: A Peaceful People Wage Heroic Struggle against the British,' Hansberry presented an opposite view and applauded the Kikuyu for 'helping to set fire to British Imperialism in Kenya.' "No sooner had she joined Freedom, which had been founded by Paul Robeson as part of his tightening embrace of the Communist Party line in the increasingly frigid Cold War than she was serving as a participant-correspondent: she accompanied the 'Sojourners for Truth and Justice,' a group of 132 black women from 15 states which was convened in September 1951, in Washington by the long-time activist Mary Church Terrell 'to demand that the Federal Government protect the lives and liberties' of black Americans. © 2021 Biography and the Biography logo are registered trademarks of A&E Television Networks, LLC. [3][4][5] Before her marriage, she had written in her personal notebooks about her attraction to women. [12] At the newspaper, she worked as "subscription clerk, receptionist, typist, and editorial assistant"[15] besides writing news articles and editorials. In doing so, he blocked access to all materials related to Hansberry's lesbianism, meaning that no scholars or biographers had access for more than 50 years. [27] Before her death, she built a circle of gay and lesbian friends, took several lovers, vacationed in Provincetown (where she enjoyed, in her words, "a gathering of the clan"),[38] and subscribed to several homophile magazines. [1] She was the first African-American female author to have a play performed on Broadway. Du Bois, Duke Ellington, Walter White, Joe E. Louis, Jesse Owens, and others. She moved to Harlem in 1951[12] and became involved in activist struggles such as the fight against evictions. The title of the play was taken from the poem "Harlem" by Langston Hughes: "What happens to a dream deferred? In 1963, Hansberry became active in the civil rights movement. A Raisin in the Sun is considered one of the hallmarks of the American stage and has continued to find new audiences throughout the decades, including Emmy-nominated television productions from both 1989 and 2008. She died on January 12, 1965. Both Hansberrys were active in the Chicago Republican Party. Her civil rights work and writing career were cut short by her death from pancreatic cancer at age 34. Biography - A Short Wiki. On January 12, 1965, Lorraine Hansberry died an early death at the age of 34 after a struggle with pancreatic cancer. Lorraine Vivian Hansberry, writer and equal rights activist, is shown on May 5, 1959. Du Bois, whose office was in the same building, and other Black Pan-Africanists. The play has earned accolades from Broadway as well, winning Tony Awards in 2004 and 2014, including Best Revival of a Play. In 2017, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. The play opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on March 11, 1959, and was a great success, having a run of 530 performances. Du Bois. [60] It appeared in book form the following year under the title To Be Young, Gifted and Black: Lorraine Hansberry in Her Own Words. The Hansberrys were routinely visited by prominent black people, including sociology professor W. E. B. DuBois, poet Langston Hughes, actor and political activist Paul Robeson, musician Duke Ellington and Olympic gold medalist Jesse Owens. "[56], Hansberry was appalled by the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki which took place while she was in high school and expressed a desire for a future in which: "Nobody fights. The show ran for more than two years and won two Tony Awards, including Best Musical. The Lorraine Hansberry Theatre of San Francisco, which specializes in original stagings and revivals of African-American theatre, is named in her honor. ", Wilkins, Fanon Che, "Beyond Bandung: The Critical Nationalism of Lorraine Hansberry, 1950 – 1965. Out Magazine, September 1999. At the same time, she said, "some of the first people who have died so far in this struggle have been white men. [39], On March 10, 1964, Hansberry and Nemiroff divorced but continued to work together.[45]. God wrote it through me." It was also a critique of employment discrimination, Northern white racism, and American poverty. In 2013, more than twenty years after Nemiroff's death, the new executor released the restricted material to scholar Kevin J. She aspired to be a journalist and to change the world. The Washington, D.C., office searched her passport files "in an effort to obtain all available background material on the subject, any derogatory information contained therein, and a photograph and complete description," while officers in Milwaukee and Chicago examined her life history. [10] Lorraine was taught: "Above all, there were two things which were never to be betrayed: the family and the race."[8]. [65], In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Hansberry in the biographical dictionary 100 Greatest African Americans.[66]. Wilkins, "Beyond Bandung" (2006), p. 199. [6] The latter's legal efforts to force the Hansberry family out culminated in the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Hansberry v. Lee, 311 U.S. 32 (1940). Her father founded Lake Street Bank, one of the first banks for blacks in Chicago, and ran a successful real estate business. When Irvine read the lyrics after it was finished, he thought, "I didn't write this. 260–261. Her lesbian identity was exposed in the articles, but she wrote under her initials, L.H., for fear of discrimination. [3][29] In 1957, around the time she separated from Nemiroff, Hansberry contacted the Daughters of Bilitis, the San Francisco-based lesbian rights organization, contributing two letters to their magazine, The Ladder, both of which were published under her initials, first "L.H.N. Hansberry broke her family’s tradition of enrolling in Southern Black colleges and instead attended the University of Wisconsin in Madison. The Double Life of Lorraine Hansberry. [2] Hansberry's family had struggled against segregation, challenging a restrictive covenant and eventually provoking the 1940 Supreme Court case Hansberry v. Lee. "Queering the borders: Lorraine Hansberry's 1957 Letters to The Ladder". At the time, the city’s African American population was burgeoning, a result of the Great Migration . Lorraine Hansberry wrote A Raisin in the Sun, a play about a struggling Black family, which opened on Broadway to great success. Lorraine Hansberry Elementary School was located in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans. Put off by the 'frantic dispatches about the "terrorists" and "witchcraft societies" in the colony' that preceded the December 1952 publication of her article, Hansberry criticized anti – Mau Mau coverage that only 'distort[ed] the fight for freedom by the five million Masai, Wahamba, Kavirondo, and Kikuyu people who [made] up the African people of Kenya.'". Hansberry was the first Black playwright and the youngest American to win a New York Critics’ Circle award. In 2010, Hansberry was inducted into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame. [21], Hansberry worked on not only the US civil rights movement, but also global struggles against colonialism and imperialism. [8], She worked on Henry A. Wallace's presidential campaign in 1948, despite her mother's disapproval. [35][36], Mumford stated that Hansberry's lesbianism caused her to feel isolated while A Raisin in the Sun catapulted her to fame; still, while "her impulse to cover evidence of her lesbian desires sprang from other anxieties of respectability and conventions of marriage, Hansberry was well on her way to coming out. [12][23], On June 20, 1953,[12] Hansberry married Robert Nemiroff, a Jewish publisher, songwriter and political activist. "[50], James Baldwin described Hansberry's 1963 meeting with Robert F. Kennedy, in which Hansberry asked for a "moral commitment" on civil rights from Kennedy. A Raisin in the Sun. At Freedom, she worked with W. E. B. Lorraine Hansberry Biography. She wrote A Raisin in the Sun, a play about a struggling black family, which opened on Broadway to great success. She also worked part-time as a waitress and cashier, and wrote in her spare time. The new title was from another Langston Hughes poem, which asked: “What happens to a dream deferred? Madame Nielsen, a British transplant who understands the African cause, is killed in crossfire at the conclusion. Carter, "Commitment amid Complexity" (1980), p. 41. Millions were trapped in brutal bondage. She held out some hope for male allies of women, writing in an unpublished essay: "If by some miracle women should not ever utter a single protest against their condition there would still exist among men those who could not endure in peace until her liberation had been achieved. Fast Facts: Lorraine Hansberry It was also a critique of employment discrimination, Northern white racism, and American poverty. [40] Over the next two years, Raisin was translated into 35 languages and was being performed all over the world. Slavery Is Everywhere July 4, 2019. Until his 1965 assassination, he vigorously supported Black nationalism. The playwright Lorraine Hansberry died at the age of 34. Hansberry was the Anderson, "Freedom Family" (2008), p. 265. Hansberry met Robert Nemiroff, a Jewish songwriter, on a picket line, and the two were married in 1953. Remembered for being the first African-American to write a Broadway play. In 1973, a musical based on A Raisin in the Sun, entitled Raisin, opened on Broadway, with music by Judd Woldin, lyrics by Robert Brittan, and a book by Nemiroff and Charlotte Zaltzberg. The production won Tony Awards for Best Actress in a Play for Rashad and Best Featured Actress in a Play for McDonald, and received a nomination for Best Revival of a Play. Carter, "Commitment amid Complexity" (1980), p. 45. Much of her work during this time concerned the African struggle for liberation and their impact on the world. A Raisin in the Sun was revived on Broadway in 2004 and received a Tony Award nomination for Best Revival of a Play. Hansberry's classmate Bob Teague remembered her as "the only girl I knew who could whip together a fresh picket sign with her own hands, at a moment's notice, for any cause or occasion". In the years after his death, Hansberry’s siblings came to prefer their private familial world to wrangling with white people, but Lorraine was the good-hearted, ugly duckling of the family. Helena Rubinstein was a Polish entrepreneur best known for her global cosmetics empire. At the age of 29, she won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award — making her the first African-American dramatist, the fifth woman, and the youngest playwright to do so. "[43], Hansberry wrote two screenplays of Raisin, both of which were rejected as controversial by Columbia Pictures. 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