40 Fun Facts About Lorraine Hansberry

Lorraine Hansberry took the title A Raisin in the Sun from the poem Harlem by which writer?

Langston Hughes was a guest in the Hansberry family home when Lorraine was a child. Duke Ellington and Jesse Owens were among the other famous visitors.

Which singer wrote the song To Be Young, Gifted and Black in memory of her friend Lorraine Hansberry?

Nina Simone took the title from a speech Hansberry gave to young writers in 1964. Hansberry was also godmother to the singer's daughter, Lisa.

Which actor played Walter Lee Younger in Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun on Broadway and on film?

Sidney Poitier jumped into the audience on opening night in 1959 and pulled the playwright onto the stage when the crowd called for the author. He repeated the role on screen in 1961.

Lorraine Hansberry's father fought what in a 1940 US Supreme Court case over the family's Chicago home?

A whites-only covenant barred Black buyers from part of the South Side, and a mob threw a brick through the window that narrowly missed young Lorraine. The case is Hansberry v. Lee.

John Fiedler, the only white actor in A Raisin in the Sun's 1959 cast, later voiced which Winnie the Pooh character?

Piglet spoke with John Fiedler's voice from the 1960s until 2005, after Walt Disney heard him on television. In Lorraine Hansberry's play he was the man sent to buy the Youngers out of their new house.

Which film star played Walter Lee Younger in the Tony-winning 2014 Broadway revival of A Raisin in the Sun?

Denzel Washington's revival won three Tony Awards, including Best Revival of a Play and Best Featured Actress for Sophie Okonedo. Lorraine Hansberry's original had been nominated for four and won none.

Which novelist set up the 1963 meeting where Lorraine Hansberry confronted Robert F. Kennedy over civil rights?

James Baldwin gathered the group at a Kennedy family apartment in New York. The meeting ended after about three hours when Hansberry walked out and most of the others followed.

Which illness killed Lorraine Hansberry at 34, just as her second Broadway play ended its run?

Pancreatic cancer was diagnosed in 1963, and two operations failed to cure it. She is buried in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, where a street now carries her name.

In Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, the Younger family awaits a $10,000 check from what source?

A life insurance policy on the late Walter Younger Sr. pays out, and his widow Lena puts part of it down on a house in an all-white neighborhood because homes there cost less.

Which civil rights leader sent a tribute read aloud at Lorraine Hansberry's Harlem funeral in January 1965?

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote that her creative gift and grasp of the era's social issues would inspire generations to come. The presiding minister, Eugene Callender, read the message aloud.

Which singer and activist published Freedom, the Harlem newspaper where Lorraine Hansberry worked in the early 1950s?

Paul Robeson was barred from traveling abroad by the State Department, so in 1952 Hansberry took his place at a peace conference in South America.

Who directed Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, becoming the first Black director of a Broadway play?

Lloyd Richards later ran the Yale School of Drama and introduced August Wilson to Broadway with Ma Rainey's Black Bottom in 1984.

Lorraine Hansberry became the youngest American playwright to win which honor for A Raisin in the Sun?

The New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for best play also made her the first Black dramatist, and only the fifth woman, to win it.

Lorraine Hansberry's second Broadway play, The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window, is set in which New York neighborhood?

Greenwich Village was Hansberry's own neighborhood: she moved there after her 1953 wedding and wrote her first hit in an apartment on Bleecker Street.

In Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, Beneatha Younger is a college student training for which profession?

Doctor is Beneatha's goal, and Mama sets aside $3,000 of the family's windfall for the schooling. Hansberry said the character was herself eight years earlier.

In Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, what business does Walter Lee Younger want to buy into?

A liquor store is Walter Lee's plan, which his churchgoing mother opposes. He hands the money to a partner, Willy, who disappears with it.

In Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, the student Joseph Asagai invites Beneatha to move to which country?

Nigeria is home for Asagai, a Yoruba student who teaches Beneatha about her African heritage and asks her to marry him.

Which Pulitzer-winning Bruce Norris play imagines the white family who sell a house to Lorraine Hansberry's Youngers?

Clybourne Park is named for the neighborhood the Youngers move to. Its second act jumps 50 years ahead, with the same house at the center of a new argument.

Lorraine Hansberry's parents, a real estate broker and a schoolteacher, were active in which Chicago political party?

Republicans counted both of her parents as active members, and her father made an unsuccessful run for Congress in 1940. Lorraine went another way, campaigning for a third-party candidate at 18.

Lorraine Hansberry's father died in 1946 in which country, where he hoped to move his family away from US racism?

Mexico drew Lorraine back three years later, when she spent a summer studying painting in Guadalajara. Her father had died there of a cerebral hemorrhage when she was 15.

Lorraine Hansberry integrated a dormitory at which Midwestern school before leaving for New York without a degree?

The University of Wisconsin in Madison is where she turned political: a classmate recalled that she could knock together a picket sign at a moment's notice for any cause.

Which actress played Ruth Younger in both the 1959 Broadway cast and the 1961 film of A Raisin in the Sun?

Ruby Dee won the National Board of Review's supporting actress award for the film. She had earlier moved in the circle around Freedom, the newspaper where Lorraine Hansberry worked.

Which actor made his film debut as George Murchison in the 1961 movie of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun?

Louis Gossett Jr. turned down an offer from the New York Knicks to take the stage role, then repeated it on screen. He won an Academy Award two decades later.

Which actress became the first Black winner of the Best Actress in a Play Tony, for 2004's A Raisin in the Sun?

Phylicia Rashad played Lena Younger opposite Sean Combs as her son, and the cast reunited for a 2008 television film of Lorraine Hansberry's play that drew more than 12 million viewers.

Which future Fame star played Beneatha in Raisin, the 1973 Broadway musical based on Lorraine Hansberry's play?

Debbie Allen created the part in a show that ran for more than two years and won the Tony Award for Best Musical.

In A Raisin in the Sun, which character offers the Younger family money to stay out of a white neighborhood?

Karl Lindner arrives from the neighborhood's improvement association, polite and vaguely threatening. Walter Lee nearly takes the buyout, then turns it down in the final scene.

On the night before their 1953 wedding, Lorraine Hansberry and her fiancé joined a protest against whose execution?

The Rosenbergs, Julius and Ethel, were executed for espionage on June 19, 1953. Hansberry and Robert Nemiroff married at her family's home in Chicago the next day.

Which US agency began watching Lorraine Hansberry in 1952 and later called themes in her hit play dangerous?

The FBI opened its file when she prepared to travel to a peace conference abroad, and one of its reviewers later flagged the Pan-Africanist themes of A Raisin in the Sun.

Which Lorraine Hansberry play, set in an African country at the end of colonial rule, reached Broadway after her death?

Les Blancs was completed from her drafts by her former husband and opened in 1970. Hansberry considered it her most important play.

Which California city is home to the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, a Black arts company founded in 1981?

San Francisco's Lorraine Hansberry Theatre has staged more than 100 productions since its founding, with performers including Ossie Davis and Ntozake Shange.

A Raisin in the Sun lost the 1960 Tony Award for Best Play to which drama, later a film starring Anne Bancroft?

The Miracle Worker, about Helen Keller and her teacher, beat a field that included plays by Gore Vidal and Lillian Hellman. Lorraine Hansberry's play went home with no Tonys from four nominations.

Lorraine Hansberry's uncle, William Leo, pioneered African history teaching at which historically Black school?

Howard University is where he founded the African Civilization section in 1922. One of his students there, Nnamdi Azikiwe, went on to become his own country's first president.

In Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, what job does Walter Lee Younger hold while dreaming of his own business?

Chauffeur work barely pays Walter Lee's way: he drives a limousine for a living. Raisin, the 1973 musical version, keeps him in the same job.

A bronze statue of Lorraine Hansberry toured US cities before settling in 2024 at which Chicago lakefront landmark?

Navy Pier became the permanent home of To Sit A While, Alison Saar's sculpture of Hansberry among five bronze chairs. It was first unveiled in Times Square in 2022.

In 1948, Lorraine Hansberry defied her mother to campaign for which Progressive Party presidential candidate?

Henry Wallace had been Franklin Roosevelt's vice president before his third-party run, which finished far behind the winner, Harry Truman. Hansberry was 18 and a student at the time.

Royalties from which 1956 pop hit, co-written by Lorraine Hansberry's husband, let her quit work and write full-time?

Cindy, Oh Cindy charted for both Vince Martin and Eddie Fisher in 1956, and the money bought her the time to write A Raisin in the Sun.

Lorraine Hansberry wrote two 1957 letters, signed only with her initials, to which early lesbian magazine?

The Ladder was the first nationally distributed lesbian publication in the United States. Her letters appeared under the initials L.H.N. and L.N.

In 1952 Lorraine Hansberry attended a peace conference in which South American country in place of a banned colleague?

Uruguay hosted the conference in Montevideo, and the trip had a cost: it prompted the US government to start keeping a file on her.

Which actor played Sidney Brustein opposite Rachel Brosnahan in the 2023 revival of Lorraine Hansberry's second play?

Oscar Isaac led the play's first Broadway staging in half a century, after a run at the Brooklyn Academy of Music earlier that year.

Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun opened in 1959 at a Broadway theater named for which actress?

Ethel Barrymore's namesake theater welcomed the play back for its 2014 revival, 55 years on. It is one of the few Broadway houses never to have been sold or renamed.