20 facts about lorraine hansberry biography
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Lorraine Hansberry's Biography
Lorraine Vivian Hansberry was born on May 19, 1930, at Provident Hospital in Chicago, Illinois. She was the youngest daughter of Nannie Perry Hansberry and Carl Augustus Hansberry. Her mother was a driving school teacher and her father was a prominent African-American businessperson and leader in the African-American community. He founded one of the first African-American banks in Chicago, Lake Street Bank, and ran a real estate business.
Because of their activism within the African-American community, many prominent African-American artists and social figures frequented the the Hansberry residence. Notable visitors include sociology professor W. E. B. DuBois (1868-1963), poet Langston Hughes (1901-1967), famed musician and jazz artist Duke Ellington (1899-1974), and the track and field athlete and Olympic gold medalist Jesse Owens (1913-1980).
Lorraine Hansberry grew up in a middle-class African-American family but was aware of and exposed to the
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In 1959, Lorraine Hansberry made history as the first African American woman to have a show produced on Broadway—A Raisin in the Sun. As a playwright, feminist, and racial justice activist, Hansberry never shied away from tough topics during her short and extraordinary life.
Lorraine Hansberry was born on May 19, 1930 at Provident Hospital on the South Side of Chicago. She was raised in a strong family, the youngest of three children born to Nannie Perry Hansberry and Carl Augustus Hansberry. Her father, Carl, founded Lake Street Bank, one of the first banks for African Americans in Chicago and also ran a successful real estate business. Her mother, Nannie, was a school teacher. Hansberry had other African American leaders in her family: her uncle William Leo Hansberry was a Professor of History at Howard University; her cousin, Shauneille Perry, was one of the first African American women to direct off-Broadway. Hansberry’s father died of a cerebral hemorrhage when she was 15.
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Lorraine Hansberry
(1930-1965)
Who Was Lorraine Hansberry?
Lorraine Hansberry wrote A Raisin in the Sun, a play about a struggling Black family, which opened on huvudgata to great success. Hansberry was the first Black playwright and the youngest American to win a New York Critics’ Circle award. Throughout her life she was heavily involved in civil rights. She died at 34 of pancreatic cancer.
Early Life
The granddaughter of a freed enslaved person, and the youngest by sju years of four children, Lorraine Vivian Hansberry 3rd was born on May 19, 1930, in Chicago, Illinois. Hansberry’s father was a successful real estate broker, and her mother was a schoolteacher. Her parents contributed large summor of money to the NAACP and the Urban League. In 1938, Hansberry's family moved to a white neighborhood and was violently attacked by neighbors. They refused to move until a court ordered them to do so, and the case made it to the Supreme Court as Hansberry v. Lee, ruling restri