LorraineHansberry was a history-making playwright and author who became the first Black woman to have a play produced on Broadway. Hansberry’s most famous work, “A Raisin In The Sun” remains one of the best known plays ever written by a Black female playwright.
Hansberry was born on May 19, 1930 in Chicago, Ill. She was raised middle-class by her father, a real estate broker, and her mother, a school teacher. When the family moved to Washington Park on Chicago’s South Side, they dealt with racism from whites that wanted to force them out of the subdivision. Hansberry’s parents, both Republicans, fought for their rights in a case that made it all the way into the Supreme Court. The family was close friends with Black intellectuals W.E.B. Du Bois and Paul Robeson, who often visited them.