"Les Blancs" … is the play that Lorraine Hansberry left unfinished at her death in 1965 and it is as if the American racial dilemma of that time has been permanently frozen into her script. It is very strange to watch this play and, in a very real way, actually see the intelligent American mind of five years ago, struggling between old concepts of liberalism-civil rights and new ideas of militance….

Miss Hansberry's tragically brief playwriting career charted the postwar steps in the racial movement, from working within the system ("A Raisin in the Sun") to a burgeoning distrust of white liberals ("The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window") to the association with Africa in "Les Blancs" that would evolve, after her death, from the ashes of passive resistance into the energy and danger of militant activism.

In "Les Blancs," Miss Hansberry was trying to cleanse herself of traditional ideas of civilized change in preparation for the bloodshed that she was just sensing would be necessary for the cauterization of racism….

There is no story to the play, really. The returning native realizes that blood must be spilled for independence in Africa (and, implicitly, for respect in America). If some of that blood must belong to white people he loved—an old lady missionary—that is a necessary tragedy.

"Les Blancs," then, is a didactic play, existing for its ideas rather than its theatre. Its characters are stereotypes, created as points of view rather than as people, and its language heavy with information. (p. 155)