Hansberry, Lorraine
Hansberry, Lorraine( 1930–65),Chicagoborn dramatist, became the first black woman to have a play produced on Broadway with A Raisin in the Sun (1959), an easy-going comedy of a family of black Chicagoans who plan to move into a white neighborhood, illustrative of Langston Hughes's poem: “What happens to a dream deferred, Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?” She followed this success with The Sign in Sidney's Brustein's Window (1964), depicting Jews and other whites as well as blacks in Greenwich Village. After her early death her husband assembled from her plays, letters, diaries, and other writings a dramatic presentation, To Be Young, Gifted and Black (1969). For The Movement (1964) she wrote wry captions for photographs of blacks in their struggle for equality. Raisin (1973) was a musical adaptation of her first play by others.
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