Lorraine Hansberry

1930-1965

Born to a middle-class black Chicago businessman, Hansberry’s family moved to Woodlawn in 1937, where she and her family faced anti-black violence from the majority white neighborhood. In 1940 her family successfully sued for their right to remain in their home- a case that they successfully won upon it going to the U.S. Supreme Court.

As a child, Lorraine's home was a vibrant intellectual hub, routinely visited by prominent Black figures such as poet Langston Hughes as well as singer, actor, and political activist Paul Robeson and many more.

As a young person, Lorraine became an influential American playwright and writer, best known for her groundbreaking work "A Raisin in the Sun," which made her the first Black woman to have a play produced on Broadway. In the 1950s, Hansberry identified as a feminist and was a closeted lesbian. She joined the New York chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis, contributing essays to its newsletter, The Ladder, under the pen name “L.H.N.”

Her lesbian identity and 1964 divorce from Nemiroff were not widely known at the time of her death. It was not until the 1980s that feminist scholars connected her feminist vision with her lesbian identity.