Reflection on Lorraine Hansberry Lorraine Hansberry, (born May 19, 1930, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.—died January 12, 1965, New York, New York), American playwright whose A Raisin in the Sun (1959) was the first drama by an African American woman to be produced on Broadway.
Hansberry was interested in writing from an early age and while in high school was drawn especially to the theatre. She attended the University of Wisconsin in 1948–50 and then briefly the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Roosevelt University (Chicago). After moving to New York City, she held various minor jobs and studied at the New School for Social Research while refining her writing skills.
In 1958 she raised funds to produce her play A Raisin in the Sun, which opened in March 1959 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on Broadway, meeting with great success. A penetrating psychological study of the personalities and emotional conflicts within a working-class black family in Chicago, A Raisin in the Sun was directed by actor Lloyd Richards, the first African
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She quickly drew a line in the sand: "Nobody's going to turn this thing into a minstrel show as far as I'm concerned," Hansberry proclaimed. "And if this blocks a sale [of the script], then it just won't be sold." Her play about the Youngers, a black family in Chicago searching for a better life, had become a hit thanks to its characters' full emotional landscapes, but Hansberry, only 28 years old when the play first opened, knew how Hollywood had long preferred to depict blacks on screen: degradingly. In the plays she wrote, Hansberry sought to jettison the images, such as the Mammy and bug-eyed buffoon archetypes, that continued to demonize black life in film. She wanted her art to be honest—to evoke truth through characters, rather than ridicule through