Hansberry, Lorraine (1930–1965)

A civil rights activist and one of the foremost and recognized playwrights of the Harlem Renaissance. Lorraine Vivian Hansberry was born on May 19, 1930, shortly after the climax of the Harlem Renaissance era, which had begun to dwindle after the 1929 stock market crash. Unlike many other Harlem Renaissance–era writers, who were born in humble circumstances, Hansberry was the youngest of four children in an upper-middle-class Chicago family. Her father, Carl Augustus Hansberry, had made his wealth with his own real estate firm, and his family enjoyed an elevated status Chicago's African American community. They were also respected members of the community, and belonged to social circles that included some of the leading African American writers, educators, and artists of the day.

However, despite the fact that they were financially well off, the Hansberrys were certainly not immune to racism and discrimination. Almost all African Americans in 1930s Chicago resided in a district known as Bronzeville. In 1938, Carl Augustus Hansberry decided to move his family to a more stable neighborhood, and he purchased a house in an all-white area. The move proved, unsurprisingly, to be a controversial one, and white mobs protested it, attempting to block the family from settling in the neighborhood. The family home was also vandalized several times, and the family was threatened on many occasions. Hansberry's father eventually took the case to the Supreme Court and, in 1940, won the right to move into the neighborhood. The experience would affect Lorraine Hansberry, who was 10 years old, and influence her future writing, most notably her work A Raisin in the Sun.

A good student, Hansberry graduated from high school in 1947 and attended the University of Wisconsin. Though she never finished her bachelor's degree, she was enrolled until 1950, and those years sparked her interest in writing. She became especially intrigued by the world of the theater, in which a dramatist could virtually create a world of her own on stage, depicting and shaping her own reality. While at the university, she also demonstrated an interest in social justice issues, becoming a member of the Young Progressives of America and the Labor Youth League.

After she left the University of Wisconsin, she moved to New York City to pursue a career in writing. By 1950, the prosperous and prolific era of the Harlem Renaissance had effectively ended, but New York remained an important literary and cultural scene for African American writers and artists. She found full-time employment writing for Freedom magazine. The job offer was not merely a stroke of good luck; Freedom had been founded by renowned singer and actor Paul Robeson, a good friend of Hansberry's [Page 671]father. Robeson, renowned for his deep bass voice, began a singing career in 1925 and starred in musicals, plays, and films, most notably Emperor Jones and Othello. In Chicago, the Hansberry home had always been a congregation place for African American intellectuals and artists, including Duke Ellington, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Robeson. (Later, Robeson's political activities and communist sympathies, which would lead to his leaving the United States for Europe, would serve as an example to Hansberry of the dangers of voicing one's political beliefs.)

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