MEET THE PLAYWRIGHT: LORRAINE HANSBERRY (1930-1965)
Her Story
Born in Chicago, Illinois on May 19, 1930, as Lorraine Vivian Hansberry to Carl and Nanie Hansberry.
The Hansberry house-hold entertained a salon-like atmosphere of notable Black politicians and intellectuals including Paul Robeson, Duke Ellington, Walter White, etc.
She attended segregated schools on the South Side where she made friends with students whose families were less fortunate than hers.
After graduating from Englewood High School in 1948, she attended the University of Wisconsin studying Art and Stage Design. She left the university after two years to seek an education of a different kind.
She moved to New York, becoming active with little theatre groups, and working as a journalist for the African American publication, Freedom. She continued her education, studying African history under the tutelage of W.E.B. Du Bois at the Jefferson School of Social Science.
She met and married Robert Nemiroff, a music publisher, in 1953, who encouraged her to pursue her interest in playwriting.
In 1963 she had a cancer diagnosis and spent the next two years in and out of hospitals.
She died on January 12, 1965
Nemiroff, her literary executor, compiled fragments from her plays, stories, and letters into a biographical play celebrating her life and spirit which he called, To Be Young, Gifted and Black.
Credits to:
Hatch, J.V., & Shine T. (1996). Black theatre USA: Plays by African Americans 1935 to today (Rev. and expanded ed.). New York: Free Press.
Welch, R. (2007). Spokesman of the Oppressed? Lorraine Hansberry at Work: The Challenge of Radical Politics in the Postwar Era. Souls, 9(4), 302-319