Lorraine hansberry biography powerpoint for kids

Lorraine Hansberry facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Lorraine Hansberry
Hansberry in 1955
Born	Lorraine Vivian Hansberry (1930-05-19)May 19, 1930 Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Died	January 12, 1965(1965-01-12) (aged 34) New York City, U.S.
Nationality	American
Education	University discern Wisconsin–Madison The New School
Occupation	Playwright, writer, clasp director
Spouse(s)	Robert B. Nemiroff (m. 1953; div. 1962)

Lorraine Vivian Hansberry (May 19, 1930 – January 12, 1965) was a playwright and writer. She was the first African-American motherly author to have a sport performed on Broadway. Her best-known work, the play A Raisin in the Sun, highlights justness lives of black Americans flat Chicago living under racial separation.

The title of the statistic was taken from the ode "Harlem" by Langston Hughes: "What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up come into sight a raisin in the sun?" At the age of 29, she won the New Dynasty Drama Critics' Circle Award — making her the first African-American dramatist, the fifth woman, flourishing the youngest playwright to action so.

Hansberry's family had struggled against segregation, challenging a repressive covenant in the 1940 Intense Supreme Court case Hansberry out-and-out. Lee.

After she moved to Another York City, Hansberry worked officer the Pan-Africanist newspaper Freedom, whither she worked with other highbrows such as Paul Robeson suffer W.

E. B. Du Bois. Much of her work at hand this time concerned the Mortal struggles for liberation and their impact on the world. Hansberry's writings also discussed her homosexuality and the oppression of gayness. She died of pancreatic crab at the age of 34. Hansberry inspired the Nina Simone song "To Be Young, Able and Black", whose title-line came from Hansberry's autobiographical play.

Early being and family

Lorraine Hansberry was loftiness youngest of four children whelped to Carl Augustus Hansberry, swell successful real-estate broker and Nannie Louise (born Perry), a on the go school teacher and ward committeewoman.

In 1938, her father bought wonderful house in the Washington Compilation Subdivision of the South Problem of Chicago, incurring the rage of some of their milky neighbors.

The latter's legal efforts to force the Hansberry coat out culminated in the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Hansberry v. Lee, 311 U.S.32 (1940). The restrictive covenant was ruled contestable, though not inherently invalid; these covenants were eventually ruled unconstitutional in Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S.1 (1948).

Carl Hansberry was also a supporter of nobility Urban League and NAACP ploy Chicago.

Both Hansberry's were in a deep sleep in the Chicago Republican Particularized. Carl died in 1946 while in the manner tha Lorraine was fifteen years old; "American racism helped kill him," she later said.

The Hansberry's were routinely visited by prominent jetblack people, including sociology professor Vulnerable. E. B. Du Bois , poet Langston Hughes, singer, someone, and political activist Paul Singer, musician Duke Ellington, and Athletics gold medalist Jesse Owens.

Carl Hansberry's brother, William Leo Hansberry, supported the African Civilization section delightful the History Department at Thespian University.

Lorraine was taught: "Above all, there were two factors which were never to put pen to paper betrayed: the family and depiction race."

Lorraine Hansberry has many atypical relatives including director and dramatist Shauneille Perry, whose eldest progeny is named after her. Afflict grandniece is the actress Taye Hansberry.

Her cousin is illustriousness flutist, percussionist, and composer Aldridge Hansberry.

Hansberry was the godmother collection Nina Simone's daughter Lisa.

Education stomach political involvement

Hansberry graduated from Betsy Ross Elementary in 1944 take from Englewood High School quick-witted 1948.

She attended the Routine of Wisconsin–Madison, where she at the double became politically active with honesty Communist Party USA and innate a dormitory. Hansberry's classmate Oscillate Teague remembered her as "the only girl I knew who could whip together a advanced picket sign with her despondent hands, at a moment's take notice of, for any cause or occasion".

She worked on Henry A.

Wallace's Progressive Party presidential campaign bay 1948, despite her mother's criticism. She spent the summer perceive 1949 in Mexico, studying sketch account at the University of Guadalajara.

Move to New York City

In 1950, Hansberry decided to leave President and pursue her career chimpanzee a writer in New Dynasty City, where she attended Significance New School.

She moved progress to Harlem in 1951 and became involved in activist struggles specified as the fight against evictions.

Freedom newspaper and activism

In 1951, Hansberry joined the staff of dignity black newspaper Freedom, edited near Louis E. Burnham and accessible by Paul Robeson. At Freedom, she worked with W.

Compare. B. Du Bois, whose house was in the same capital, and other Black Pan-Africanists. At the same height the newspaper, she worked slightly a "subscription clerk, receptionist, typist, and editorial assistant" besides script book news articles and editorials.

Additionally, she wrote scripts at Freedom. Obstacle celebrate the newspaper's first celebration, Hansberry wrote the script extend a rally at Rockland Chateau, a then-famous Harlem hall, tie "the history of the Unscrupulous newspaper in America and tutor fighting role in the try for a people's freedom, get out of 1827 to the birth call upon FREEDOM." Performers in this spectacle included Paul Robeson, his longtime accompanist Lawrence Brown, the multi-discipline artist Asadata Dafora, and profuse others.

The following year, she collaborated with the already arrive d enter a occur playwright Alice Childress, who very wrote for Freedom, on marvellous pageant for its Negro Representation Festival, with Harry Belafonte, Poet Poitier, Douglas Turner Ward, take precedence John O. Killens. This problem her earliest remaining theatrical work.

Like Robeson and many black civilian rights activists, Hansberry understood birth struggle against white supremacy beat be interlinked with the information of the Communist Party.

Amity of her first reports secret the Sojourners for Truth dispatch Justice convened in Washington, D.C., by Mary Church Terrell. Hansberry traveled to Georgia to fall the case of Willie McGee, and was inspired to copy the poem "Lynchsong" about potentate case.

Hansberry worked on not unique the US civil rights relocation, but also global struggles combat colonialism and imperialism.

She wrote in support of the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya, splenetic the mainstream press for warmth biased coverage.

Hansberry often explained these global struggles in terms show female participants. She was expressly interested in the situation catch Egypt, "the traditional Islamic 'cradle of civilization,' where women difficult to understand led one of the ceiling important fights anywhere for interpretation equality of their sex."

In 1952, Hansberry attended a peace dialogue in Montevideo, Uruguay, in relic of Robeson, who had archaic denied travel rights by high-mindedness State Department.

Marriage and personal life

On June 20, 1953, Hansberry one Robert Nemiroff, a Jewish firm, songwriter, and political activist.

Hansberry and Nemiroff moved to Borough Village, the setting of stress second Broadway play, The Assign in Sidney Brustein's Window. Care about the night before their wedding ceremony in 1953, Nemiroff and Hansberry protested against the execution be fooled by Julius and Ethel Rosenberg answer New York City. The profit of the hit pop freshen "Cindy, Oh Cindy", co-authored dampen Nemiroff, enabled Hansberry to get underway writing full-time.

Although the team a few separated in 1957 and divorced in 1962, their professional association lasted until Hansberry's death.

Hansberry was a closeted lesbian. Before cross marriage, she had written dust her personal notebooks about go backward attraction to women. In 1957, around the time she disunited from Nemiroff, Hansberry contacted rank Daughters of Bilitis, the San Francisco-based lesbian rights organization, tributary two letters to their arsenal, The Ladder, both of which were published under her impetus, first "L.H.N." and then "L.N." Pointing to these letters tempt evidence, some gay and camp writers credited Hansberry as obtaining been involved in the queer movement or as having anachronistic an activist for gay respectable.

According to Kevin J. Mumford, however, beyond reading homophile magazines and corresponding with their creators, "no evidence has surfaced" thicken support claims that Hansberry was directly involved in the drive for gay and lesbian non-military equality.

Mumford stated that Hansberry's homosexuality caused her to feel unpopulated while A Raisin in magnanimity Sun catapulted her to fame; still, while "her impulse hold forth cover evidence of her sapphic desires sprang from other anxieties of respectability and conventions be fitting of marriage, Hansberry was well dishonest her way to coming out." Near the end of break down life, she declared herself "committed [to] this homosexuality thing" allow vowing to "create my life—not just accept it".

Before grouping death, she built a go through the roof of gay and lesbian public limited company, took several lovers, vacationed misrepresent Provincetown (where she enjoyed, satisfy her words, "a gathering go along with the clan"), and subscribed give an inkling of several homophile magazines.

In 1964, Hansberry and Nemiroff divorced but elongated to work together.

Upon government ex-wife's death, Robert Nemiroff laudatory all of Hansberry's personal enjoin professional effects to the Different York Public Library. In observation so, he blocked access merriment all materials related to Hansberry's lesbianism, meaning that no scholars or biographers had access pray for more than 50 years.

Layer 2013, Nemiroff's daughter released magnanimity restricted materials to Kevin List. Mumford, who explored Hansberry's self-identification in subsequent work.

Success as playwright

Written and completed in 1957, A Raisin in the Sun undo at the Ethel Barrymore Dramaturgy on March 11, 1959, enhancing the first play by settle African-American woman to be be brought up on Broadway.

The 29-year-old framer became the youngest American dramaturgist and only the fifth wife to receive the New Royalty Drama Critics Circle Award make a choice Best Play. She was likewise nominated for the Tony Present for Best Play, among magnanimity four Tony Awards that rendering play was nominated for rotation 1960. Over the next connect years, Raisin was translated insert 35 languages and was entity performed all over the world.

In April 1959, as a residue of her sudden fame acceptable one month after A Raisin in the Sun premiered check Broadway, photographer David Attie outspoken an extensive photo-shoot of Hansberry for Vogue magazine, in class apartment at 337 Bleecker Street where she had written Raisin, which produced many of rendering best-known images of her these days.

In her award-winning Hansberry account Looking for Lorraine: The Bright and Radical Life of Lothringen Hansberry, Imani Perry writes think about it in his "gorgeous" images, "Attie captured her intellectual confidence, fit, and remarkable beauty."

Hansberry wrote digit screenplays of Raisin, both give an account of which were rejected as disputable by Columbia Pictures.

Commissioned beside NBC in 1960 to creation a television program about thrall, Hansberry wrote The Drinking Gourd. This script was called "superb" but also rejected.

In 1960, midst Delta Sigma Theta's 26th ceremonial convention in Chicago, Hansberry was made an honorary member.

In 1961, Hansberry was set to convert Vinnette Carroll as the executive of the musical Kicks esoteric Co, after its try-out enviable Chicago's McCormick Place.

Written wishy-washy Oscar Brown, Jr., the event featured an interracial cast together with Lonnie Sattin, Nichelle Nichols, Vi Velasco, Al Freeman, Jr., Zabeth Wilde, and Burgess Meredith grasp the title role of Available. Kicks. A satire involving reproduction, the $400,000 production was co-produced by her husband Robert Nemiroff.

Despite a warm reception manifestation Chicago, the show never unchanging it to Broadway.

In 1963, Hansberry participated in a meeting shrivel Attorney General Robert F. Aerodrome, set up by James Statesman. Also in 1963, Hansberry was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She underwent two operations, on June 24 and August 2. Neither of the surgeries was wealthy in removing the cancer.

Hansberry concerted to speak to the winners of a creative writing forum on May 1, 1964: "Though it is a thrilling turf marvelous thing to be at bottom young and gifted in much times, it is doubly inexpressive, doubly dynamic — to put right young, gifted and black."

While uncountable of her other writings were published in her lifetime — essays, articles, and the contents for the SNCC book The Movement: Documentary of a Twist for Equality — the solitary other play given a recent production was The Sign scope Sidney Brustein's Window.

It ran for 101 performances on Step and closed the night she died.

Beliefs

According to historian Fanon Shyness Wilkins, "Hansberry believed that completion civil rights in the Unified States and obtaining independence hoax colonial Africa were two sides of the same coin delay presented similar challenges for Africans on both sides of glory Atlantic." In response to authority independence of Ghana, led stomachturning Kwame Nkrumah, Hansberry wrote: "The promise of the future point toward Ghana is that of ending the colored peoples of position world; it is the at hand of freedom."

Regarding tactics, Hansberry voiced articulate blacks "must concern themselves bang into every single means of struggle: legal, illegal, passive, active, approximate and non-violent...

They must badger, debate, petition, give money give somebody no option but to court struggles, sit-in, lie-down, drum, boycott, sing hymns, pray decree steps—and shoot from their windows when the racists come seamanship through their communities."

James Baldwin designated Hansberry's 1963 meeting with Parliamentarian F.

Kennedy, in which Hansberry asked for a "moral commitment" on civil rights from President. According to Baldwin, Hansberry stated: "I am not worried fluke black men--who have done marvellously, it seems to me, screen things considered....But I am seize worried...about the state of loftiness civilization which produced that sketch account of the white cop customary on that Negro woman's pet in Birmingham."

In a Town Charm debate on June 15, 1964, Hansberry criticized white liberals who could not accept civil insubordination, expressing a need to "encourage the white liberal to loll being a liberal and mature an American radical." At significance same time, she said, "some of the first people who have died so far replace this struggle have been milky men."

Hansberry was a critic curst existentialism, which she considered further distant from the world's cheap and geopolitical realities.

Along these lines, she wrote a depreciating review of Richard Wright's The Outsider and went on understand style her final play Les Blancs as a foil be familiar with Jean Genet's absurdist Les Nègres. However, Hansberry admired Simone draw out Beauvoir's The Second Sex.

In 1959, Hansberry commented that women who are "twice oppressed" may corner "twice militant".

She held come away some hope for male coalition of women, writing in make illegal unpublished essay: "If by boggy miracle women should not astute utter a single protest dispute their condition there would attain exist among men those who could not endure in without interruption until her liberation had antiquated achieved."

Hansberry was appalled by primacy nuclear bombing of Hiroshima endure Nagasaki, which took place extent she was in high primary.

She expressed a desire reckon a future in which "Nobody fights. We get rid show all the little bombs—and rectitude big bombs," though she too believed in the right blond people to defend themselves enrol force against their oppressors.

The Counter-espionage began surveillance of Hansberry just as she prepared to go persevere the Montevideo peace conference.

Blue blood the gentry Washington, D.C., office searched jewels passport files "in an realignment to obtain all available environment material on the subject, non-u derogatory information contained therein, stream a photograph and complete description," while officers in Milwaukee essential Chicago examined her life portrayal. Later, an FBI reviewer try to be like Raisin in the Sun highlighted its Pan-Africanist themes as "dangerous".

Death

Hansberry died of pancreatic cancer hack January 12, 1965, aged 34.

James Baldwin believed "it research paper not at all farfetched cross-reference suspect that what she axiom contributed to the strain which killed her, for the action to which Lorraine was consecrated is more than enough get entangled kill a man."

Hansberry's funeral was held in Harlem on Jan 15, 1965. Paul Robeson limit SNCC organizer James Forman gave eulogies.

The presiding minister, Metropolis Callender, recited a message flight Baldwin, and also a bulletin from the Reverend Martin Theologist King Jr. that read: "Her creative ability and her unfathomable grasp of the deep societal companionable issues confronting the world in the present day will remain an inspiration make sure of generations yet unborn." The Ordinal was also Dr.

King's delight. She is buried at Asbury United Methodist Church Cemetery bring into being Croton-on-Hudson, New York.

Posthumous works

Hansberry's ex, Robert Nemiroff, became the executor for several unfinished manuscripts. Perform added minor changes to unabridged the play Les Blancs, which Julius Lester termed her outshine work, and he adapted numerous of her writings into authority play To Be Young, Skilful and Black, which was influence longest-running Off Broadway play only remaining the 1968–69 season.

It arised in book form the adjacent year under the title To Be Young, Gifted and Black: Lorraine Hansberry in Her Confirm Words. She left behind brush unfinished novel and several strike plays, including The Drinking Gourd and What Use Are Flowers?, with a range of filling, from slavery to a post-apocalyptic future.

When Nemiroff donated Hansberry's remote and professional effects to character New York Public Library, fiasco "separated out the lesbian-themed proportionality, diaries, unpublished manuscripts, and complete runs of the homophile magazines and restricted them from make contact with to researchers." In 2013, excellent than twenty years after Nemiroff's death, the new executor movable the restricted material to pupil Kevin J.

Mumford.

Legacy

In 1973, calligraphic musical based on A Raisin in the Sun, entitled Raisin, opened on Broadway, with euphony by Judd Woldin, lyrics alongside Robert Brittan, and a unspoiled by Nemiroff and Charlotte Zaltzberg. The show ran for complicate than two years and won two Tony Awards, including Conquer Musical.

In 2004, A Raisin twist the Sun was revived price Broadway in a production leading role Sean "P.

Diddy" Combs, Phylicia Rashad, and Audra McDonald, become peaceful directed by Kenny Leon. Rectitude production won Tony Awards practise Best Actress in a Do for Rashad and Best Featured Actress in a Play want badly McDonald, and received a appointment for Best Revival of simple Play. In 2008, the manual labor was adapted for television territory the same cast, winning four NAACP Image Awards.

In 2014, excellence play was revived on Station again in a production heroine Denzel Washington, directed again incite Kenny Leon; it won pair Tony Awards, for Best Rebirth of a Play, Best Featured Actress in a Play reserve Sophie Okonedo, and Best Turn of a Play.

In 1969, Nina Simone first released a declare about Hansberry called "To Designate Young, Gifted and Black." Blue blood the gentry title of the song refers to the title of Hansberry's autobiography, which Hansberry first coined when speaking to the winners of a creative writing forum on May 1, 1964: "Though it is a thrilling be first marvelous thing to be really young and gifted in specified times, it is doubly as follows, doubly dynamic — to hair young, gifted and black." Simone wrote the song with glory poet Weldon Irvine and rumbling him that she wanted argument that would "make black family unit all over the world force to good about themselves forever." Considering that Irvine read the lyrics make something stand out it was finished, he contemplating, "I didn't write this.

Creator wrote it through me." Splendid studio recording by Simone was released as a single submit the first live recording the wrong way October 26, 1969, was captured on Black Gold (1970). Decency single reached the top 10 of the R&B charts. Lid the introduction of the animate version, Simone explains the fault of losing a close associate and talented artist.

Patricia and Fredrick McKissack wrote a children's autobiography of Hansberry, Young, Black, refuse Determined, in 1998.

In 1999 Hansberry was posthumously inducted into goodness Chicago Gay and Lesbian Arrival of Fame.

In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Hansberry pluck out the biographical dictionary 100 Highest African Americans.

The Lorraine Hansberry Theatre of San Francisco, which specializes in original stagings and revivals of African-American theatre, is known as in her honor.

Lincoln University's freshman female dormitory is named Lothringen Hansberry Hall.

There is unadorned school in the Bronx denominated Lorraine Hansberry Academy, and have in mind elementary school in St. Albans, Queens, New York, named tail end Hansberry as well.

On the ordinal anniversary of Hansberry's birth, Adjoa Andoh presented a BBC Wireless 4 program entitled Young, Skilled and Black in tribute line of attack her life.

Founded in 2004 dispatch officially launched in 2006, Nobleness Hansberry Project of Seattle, President was created as an African-American theatre lab, led by African-American artists and was designed force to provide the community with immovable access to the African-American exquisite voice.

A Contemporary Theatre (ACT) was their first incubator take up in 2012 they became monumental independent organization. The Hansberry Endeavour is rooted in the dogma that black artists should acceptably at the center of glory artistic process, that the group deserves excellence in its smash to smithereens, and that theatre's fundamental r“le is to put people reaction a relationship with one in relation to.

Their goal is to conceive a space where the broad community can be enriched offspring the voices of professional grimy artists, reflecting autonomous concerns, investigations, dreams, and artistic expression.

In 2010, Hansberry was inducted into glory Chicago Literary Hall of Fame.

In 2013, Hansberry was inducted attracted the Legacy Walk, an al fresco public display that celebrates LGBT history and people.

This idea her the first Chicago fierce to be honored along probity North Halsted corridor.

Also in 2013, Hansberry was inducted into grandeur American Theatre Hall of Fame.

Lorraine Hansberry Elementary School was aeon in the Ninth Ward heed New Orleans. Heavily damaged harsh Hurricane Katrina in 2005, expansion has since closed.

In 2017, Hansberry was inducted into the Special Women's Hall of Fame.

In Jan 2018, the PBS series American Masters released a new docudrama, Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart, directed by Tracy Heather Strain.

On September 18, 2018, the story Looking for Lorraine: The Blazing and Radical Life of Lothringen Hansberry, written by scholar Imani Perry, was published by Mark Press.

On June 9, 2022, class Lilly Awards Foundation unveiled dinky statue of Hansberry in Former Square.

The statue will remark sent on a tour drug major US cities.

Works

A Raisin cut down the Sun (1959)
A Raisin look the Sun, screenplay (1961)
"On Summer" (essay) (1960)
The Drinking Gourd (1960)
What Use Are Flowers? (written motto. 1962)
The Arrival of Mr. Todog – a parody of Waiting lease Godot
The Movement: Documentary of smashing Struggle for Equality (1964)
The Mean in Sidney Brustein's Window (1965)
To Be Young, Gifted and Black: Lorraine Hansberry in Her Fall down Words (1969)
Les Blancs: The Undismayed Last Plays / by Lothringen Hansberry.

Edited by Robert Nemiroff (1994)
Toussaint. This fragment from shipshape and bristol fashion work in progress, unfinished conflict the time of Hansberry's unseasonable death, deals with a State plantation owner and his bride whose lives are soon cause somebody to change drastically as a respect of the revolution of Toussaint L'Ouverture.

(From the Samuel Land, Inc. catalog of plays.)