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Lorraine Hansberry
1930–1965
Born Chicago, Illinois
In March 1959, Lorraine Hansberry's play A Raisin in the Sun opened on Broadway to glowing reviews. The twenty-nine-year-old writer became the first African American playwright to win the coveted New York Drama Critics' Circle Award. Hansberry's story, which centers on a Black family's attempt to buy a house in a white Chicago neighborhood, drew on her family's experiences of racism.
Hansberry was a civil rights activist who associated with the Communist Party of America and supported aggressive anti-racist action. When CBS correspondent Mike Wallace interviewed her during the run of A Raisin in the Sun, she asserted that Black people had "a great deal to be angry about ...they are still lynching Negroes in America. I feel, as our African friends do, that we need to point toward the total liberation of the African peoples all over the world."
David Attie (1920–1982)
Gelatin silver print, 1959 |