Lorraine Vivian Hansberry

Death

Hansberry, a heavy smoker her whole life, died of pancreatic cancer on January 12, 1965, aged 34. James Baldwin believed “it is not at all farfetched to suspect that what she saw contributed to the strain which killed her, for the effort to which Lorraine was dedicated is more than enough to kill a man.”

Hansberry’s funeral was held in Harlem on January 15, 1965. Paul Robeson and SNCC organizer James Forman gave eulogies. The presiding minister, Eugene Callender, recited messages from Baldwin and the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. which read: “Her creative ability and her profound grasp of the deep social issues confronting the world today will remain an inspiration to generations yet unborn.” The 15th was also Dr. King’s birthday. She is buried at Asbury United Methodist Church Cemetery in Croton-on-Hudson, New York.

Posthumous works

Hansberry’s ex-husband, Robert Nemiroff, became the executor for several unfinished manuscripts. He added minor changes to complete the play Les Blancs, which Julius Lester termed her best work, and he adapted many of her writings into the play To Be Young, Gifted and Black, which was the longest-running Off-Broadway play of the 1968–69 season. It appeared in book form the following year under the title To Be Young, Gifted and Black: Lorraine Hansberry in Her Own Words. She left behind an unfinished novel and several other plays, including The Drinking Gourd and What Use Are Flowers? with a range of content, from slavery to a post-apocalyptic future.

Hansberry Bio

Lorraine Hansberry Documentary Project – The Documentary
by Tracy Heather Strain

Legacy

Raisin, a musical based on A Raisin in the Sun, opened in New York in 1973, winning the Tony Award for Best Musical, with the book by Nemiroff, music by Judd Woldin, and lyrics by Robert Britten. A Raisin in the Sun was revived on Broadway in 2004 and received a Tony Award nomination for Best Revival of a Play. The cast included Sean Combs (“P Diddy”) as Walter Lee Younger Jr., Phylicia Rashad (Tony Award-winner for Best Actress), and Audra McDonald (Tony Award-winner for Best Featured Actress). It was produced for television in 2008 with the same cast, garnering two NAACP Image Awards.

Nina Simone first released a song about Hansberry in 1969 called “To Be Young, Gifted and Black.” The title of the song refers to the title of Hansberry’s autobiography, which Hansberry first coined when speaking to the winners of a creative writing conference on May 1, 1964, “though it is a thrilling and marvelous thing to be merely young and gifted in such times, it is doubly so, doubly dynamic — to be young, gifted and black.” Simone wrote the song with a poet named Weldon Irvine and told him that she wanted lyrics that would “make black children all over the world feel good about themselves forever.” When Irvine read the lyrics after it was finished, he thought, “I didn’t write this. God wrote it through me.” In a recorded to introduction of the song, Simone explained the difficulty of losing a close friend and talented artist.

Patricia and Fredrick McKissack wrote a children’s biography of Hansberry, Young, Black, and Determined, in 1998.

In 1999 Hansberry was posthumously inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame.

In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Hansberry as one of his 100 Greatest African Americans.

The Lorraine Hansberry Theatre of San Francisco, which specializes in original stagings and revivals of African-American theatre, is named in her honor. Singer and pianist Nina Simone, who was a close friend of Hansberry, used the title of her unfinished play to write a civil rights-themed song “To Be Young, Gifted and Black” together with Weldon Irvine. The single reached the top 10 of the R&B charts. A studio recording by Simone was released as a single and the first live recording on October 26, 1969, was captured on Black Gold(1970).

Lincoln University’s first-year female dormitory is named Lorraine Hansberry Hall. There is a school in the Bronx called Lorraine Hansberry Academy, and an elementary school in St. Albans, Queens, New York, named after Hansberry as well.

On the eightieth anniversary of Hansberry’s birth, Adjoa Andoh presented a BBC Radio 4 program entitled “Young, Gifted and Black” in tribute to her life.

In 2010, Hansberry was inducted into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame.

In 2013, Hansberry was inducted into the Legacy Walk, an outdoor public display that celebrates LGBT history and people. This makes her the first Chicago-native honored along the North Halsted corridor.

Also in 2013, Lorraine Hansberry was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame.

Lorraine Hansberry Elementary School was located in the 9th Ward of New Orleans. It was heavily damaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. It has since closed.

In 2017, she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.

Works

  • A Raisin in the Sun (1959)
  • A Raisin in the Sun, screenplay (1961)
  • “On Summer” (essay) (1960)
  • The Drinking Gourd (1960)
  • What Use Are Flowers? (written c. 1962)
  • The Arrival of Mr. Todog – a parody of Waiting for Godot
  • The Movement: Documentary of a Struggle for Equality (1964)
  • The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window (1965)
  • To Be Young, Gifted and Black: Lorraine Hansberry in Her Own Words (1969)
  • Les Blancs: The Collected Last Plays / by Lorraine Hansberry. Edited by Robert Nemiroff (1994)
  • Toussaint. This fragment from a work in progress, unfinished at the time of Hansberry’s untimely death, deals with a Haitian plantation owner and his wife whose lives are soon to change drastically as a result of the revolution of Toussaint L’Ouverture. (From the Samuel French, Inc. catalog of plays.)

Wikipedia

LINKS

http://www.eurweb.com/2014/05/lorraine-hansberry-biopic-in-its-developmental-stages/

_in_the_sun_broadway_revival_shows_why_it_remains_relevant.html

http://www.biography.com/people/lorraine-hansberry-9327823

http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap8/hansberry.html

http://www.gradesaver.com/author/lorraine-hansberry/ http://kirjasto.sci.fi/corhans.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorraine_Hansberry

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Raisin_in_the_Sun

http://experiencinghistory.blogspot.com/2011/03/raisin-in-sun- hits-broadway.html

http://www.biography.com/people/langston-hughes-9346313

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._E._B._Du_Bois http://www.essence.com/2010/12/02/vintage-vamp-ruby-dee/ http://www.playbillvault.com/Show/Detail/4376/A-Raisin-in-the-Sun

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3208286?uid=3739840&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21104100787713

Langston Hughes Poem: Comment

http://www.broadway.com/buzz/175438/president-and-mrs-obama-set-to-see-denzel-washington-in-a-raisin-in-the-sun/

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0710/p09s02-coop.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudia_McNeil

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Poitier

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3208286?uid=3739840&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21104100787713

http://www.broadway.com/buzz/175558/the-obamas-meet-the-youngers-see-the-president-first-ladys-date-night-at-a-raisin-in-the-sun/

http://www.allposters.com/-sp/Actor-Louis-Gossett-Jr-in-a-Scene-from-the-Play-A-Raisin-in-the-Sun-Posters_i5336614_.htm

http://www.blackpast.org/aah/hansberry-william-leo-1894-1965 http://urbancrazes.com/headline/my-mentor-danny-glover/

http://www.playbill.com/news/article/113211-A-Raisin-in-the-Sun-TV-Movie-with-McDonald-Rashad-and-Combs-to-Debut-at-Sundance https://www.telecharge.com/eventoverview.aspx?cityName=NY%20City%20Area&productId=9976

http://www.raisinbroadway.com/

Lorraine Hansberry: Her Chicago law story

http://www.theatermania.com/new-york-city-theater/news/04-2014/denzel-washington-and-company-take-the-stage-as-a-_68125.html http://lhlt.org/

http://www.broadwayworld.com/norfolk/article/PBS-to-Air-A-RAISIN-IN-THE-SUN-REVISITED-Documentary-1025-20131004#.U3v8c9JdU3k

When Lorraine Met Lloyd, and ‘A Raisin in the Sun’ Got Raised

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/black-playwrights-keepin-real-article-1.1604961

Pages:

iforcolor

ARCHIVIST, EDUCATOR, HISTORIAN, and ARTiST
Dale Ricardo Shields is a 2017 winner of The Kennedy Center/Stephen Sondheim Inspirational Teacher Award®, 2017 and 2015 Tony® award nominee for the Excellence in Theatre Education Award, the 2017 AUDELCO/"VIV" Special Achievement Award, 2020, 2021, and 2022 ENCORE AWARD / The Actors Fund and winner of the 2022. Recently, he won the 2022 Legend Award from his alma mater Ohio University. He is the 2021 winner of the Paul Robeson Award, presented (jointly) by the Actors Equity Association and the Actors Equity Foundation.

Research Accomplishments:
His extensive professional credits as a Director, Stage manager, and Actor (Broadway, Off-Broadway, Off-Off-Broadway, and Regional) As an actor he has appeared on Saturday Night Live, Another World, Guiding Light, The Cosby Show, and the ITV television series "Special Needs" and commercials and film.

Professor Shields is a member of the Actors Equity Association, Screen Actors Guild, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, and the American Guild of Musical Artists performance unions and an associate member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers.

He began his artistic academic career in New York City at Playwrights Horizon, The South Bronx Action Theatre, and Mind Builders, and then was invited to join the teaching staff at the Joseph Papp Public Theatre (New York Shakespeare Festival). He represented the United States for Theatre Young Audiences at the ASSITEJ Theatre Festival in London, England.

He has taught and been a visiting artist at Ohio University, The College of Wooster, Denison University, Macalester College, Susquehanna University, and SUNY Potsdam.

He holds B.F.A and M.F.A, Degrees from Ohio University.

Website(s)

Iforcolor.org [Research]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dale_Ricardo_Shields [Career]