“Lorraine Hansberry addresses airlift students from Lorraine Hansberry addressing the 81 students who came to the U.S. on the airlift from East Africa at an orientation session that lasted several days. Seventy-nine students were from Kenya, one from Tanganyika (later renamed Tanzania), and one from Uganda. Hansberry was one of the African Americans who the American Committee on Africa arranged to be speakers and counselors for the orientation session. Hansberry was a playwright, and her well-regarded play A Raisin in the Sun opened on Broadway that year with Sidney Poitier (also a supporter of the airlift) in the cast. (Source: Airlift to America: How Barack Obama, Sr., John F. Kennedy, Tom Mboya, and 800East African Students Changed Their World and Ours by Tom Shachtman (St. Martin’s Press, 2009) Photo courtesy of Cora Weiss. ” Collection: Private collection of Cora and Peter WeissEast Africa
“Seems like God don’t see fit to give the Black man nothing but dreams – but He did give us children to make them dreams seem worthwhile.”
— Lorraine Hansberry
