Hansberry grew up surrounded by a multitude of prominent black intellectuals. Watch the PBS documentary, Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart

She was later quoted as saying that “American racism helped kill him.”įor a wonderful overview of Lorraine Hansberry’s brief, inspiring life,

Hansberry’s father died in 1946 when she was only fifteen years old. In 1938, after her father bought a house in the south side of Chicago, the family was subject to the wrath of their white neighbors, resulting in U.S. Lorraine Hansberry was the youngest of four siblings whose father was Carl Augustus Hansberry, a successful real estate broker and social activist, and mother Nannie Louise, a driving school teacher and ward committeewoman. Hansberry was also part of and wrote for the Daughters of Bilitis magazine The Ladder, mainly articles on social issues of race and gender. She wrote political essays and worked for the African-American magazine Freedom. She was only 34 years old when she died of pancreatic cancer. The posthumous play and published collection To Be Young, Gifted and Black encapsulated a brief and brilliant career. Hansberry was also known for the plays The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window and Les Blancs. Hansberry grew up in an environment that set the stage, so to speak, for her best-known work - A Raisin in the Sun, the first play by an African-American woman to be staged on Broadway.Īt the age of 29, she became the youngest American and the first African-American playwright to win the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Play.

Lorraine Hansberry (– January 12, 1965) was an American playwright and author.

Hansberry lorraine a raisin in the sun