"What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?" - Lorraine Hansberry - #TheWomanAlchemist for the month of May - Women Inspiring Women and everyone else - #MonthlyFeature
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The PeopleAlchemist Edit: #theWomanAlchemist #MonthlyFeature #womanofthemonth - Lorraine Hansberry
Hello, and welcome back to the #TheWomanAlchemist monthly feature. This Friday would have been the 93rd birthday of Lorraine Hansberry, an American playwriter born on 19 May 1930 in Chicago. She was the first Black playwright and, at 29, also the youngest American to win a New York Critics' Circle award. Throughout her life, she was a civil rights activist and an advocate for gay rights, addressing social issues in her writings.Lorraine Hansberry Life - an overview
Lorraine Hansberry was the granddaughter of a freed enslaved person and the youngest of four children. Her parents contributed large sums to the NAACP and the Urban League. The Hanberrys moved to a white neighbourhood when she was eight and ended up being violently attacked by neighbours. They moved only after being ordered to do so by a court. The case reached the Supreme Court, ruling restrictive covenants were illegal (Hansberry v. Lee). Hansberry was interested in writing from an early age and, while in high school, was drawn especially to the theatre.Lorraine Hansberry - Key stages
- 1948 - 1950: Hansberry attends the University of Wisconsin instead of enrolling in Southern Black colleges. After two years, she drops out and moves to New York City
- 1950 to 1953: Hansberry becomes writer and associate editor for Paul Robeson's progressive Black newspaper, Freedom, while working part-time as a waitress and cashier. Albeit she reveals he lesbian identity in the articles, Hansberry writes under her initials, L.H., for fear of discrimination
- 1953: Hansberry marries Robert Nemiroff, a Jewish songwriter who she met on a picket line
- 1956: Hansberry quits her job and commits to writing full time
- 1957: she contributes letters to the magazine, The Ladder about feminism and homophobia
- 1958: Hansberry raises funds to produce her play The Crystal Stair.
- 1959: the play opens, renamed A Raisin in the Sun, at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on 11 March and is a great success, running for 530 performances.
- 1961 - the film version of the play, starring Sidney Poitier, receives a special award at the Cannes Festival
- 1962 - Hansberry and Nemiroff divorce, though they continue to work together
- 1963 - Hansberry becomes active in the civil rights movement. Along with Harry Belafonte, Lena Horne, James Baldwin and others, Hansberry meets with Robert Kennedy, then the attorney general, to test his position on civil rights.
- 1964 - The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window debuts in theatres; Hansberry is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer
- 1965 - She dies at the age of 34.