Life
Lorraine Hansberry was the youngest of four children of Carl Augustus Hansberry, a successful real estate broker, and Nannie Louise Perry. In 1938, her father bought a house in the Washington Park Subdivision of the South Side of Chicago, violating a restrictive covenant and incurring the wrath of many neighbors. The latter's legal efforts to force the Hansberrys out culminated in the U.S. Supreme Court's 1940 decision in Hansberry v. Lee holding the restrictive covenant in the case contestable, though not inherently invalid.
Hansberry attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison, but found college uninspiring and left in 1950 to pursue her career as a writer in New York City, where she attended The New School. She worked on the staff of the black newspaper Freedom under the auspices of Paul Robeson, and worked with W. E. B. DuBois, whose office was in the same building. A Raisin in the Sun was written at this time, and was a huge success. It was the first play written by an African-American woman to be produced on Broadway. Aged 29, she became the youngest American playwright and only the fifth woman to receive the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play. While many of her other writings were published in her lifetime - essays, articles, and the text for the SNCC book The Movement, the only other play given a contemporary production was The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window.
In 1961, Hansberry was set to replace Vinnette Carroll as the director of the musical, Kicks and Co, after its try-out at Chicago's McCormick Place. It was written by Oscar Brown, Jr. and featured an interracial cast including Lonnie Sattin, Nichelle Nichols, Vi Velasco, Al Freeman, Jr., Zabeth Wilde and Burgess Meredith in the title role of Mr. Kicks. A satire involving miscegenation, the $400,000 production was co-produced by her husband Robert Nemiroff; despite a warm reception in Chicago, the show never made it to Broadway.
Read more about this topic: Lorraine Hansberry
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“There is a delicate balance of putting yourself last and not being a doormat and thinking of yourself first and not coming off as selfish, arrogant, or bossy. We spend the majority of our lives attempting to perfect this balance. When we are successful, we have many close, healthy relationships. When we are unsuccessful, we suffer the natural consequences of damaged and sometimes broken relationships. Children are just beginning their journey on this important life lesson.”
—Cindy L. Teachey. “Building Lifelong Relationships—School Age Programs at Work,” Child Care Exchange (January 1994)
“The real sin against life is to abuse and destroy beauty, even one’s own—even more, one’s own, for that has been put in our care and we are responsible for its well-being.”
—Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980)
“There are situations in life to which the only satisfactory response is a physically violent one. If you don’t make that response, you continually relive the unresolved situation over and over in your life.”
—Russell Hoban (b. 1925)