41 Facts About Lorraine Hansberry

Lorraine Vivian Hansberry was a playwright and writer.

Lorraine Hansberry was the first African American female author to have a play performed on Broadway.

Lorraine Hansberry died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 34 during the Broadway run of her play The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window in 1965.

Lorraine Hansberry inspired the Nina Simone song "To Be Young, Gifted and Black", whose title-line came from Lorraine Hansberry's autobiographical play.

Carl Lorraine Hansberry was a supporter of the Urban League and NAACP in Chicago.

Carl died in 1946 when Lorraine Hansberry was fifteen years old; "American racism helped kill him," she later said.

Lorraine Hansberry has many notable relatives including director and playwright Shauneille Perry, whose eldest child is named after her.

Lorraine Hansberry's cousin is the flutist, percussionist, and composer Aldridge Hansberry.

Lorraine Hansberry graduated from Betsy Ross Elementary in 1944 and from Englewood High School in 1948.

Lorraine Hansberry worked on Henry A Wallace's Progressive Party presidential campaign in 1948, despite her mother's disapproval.

Lorraine Hansberry spent the summer of 1949 in Mexico, studying painting at the University of Guadalajara.

In 1950, Lorraine Hansberry decided to leave Madison and pursue her career as a writer in New York City, where she attended The New School.

Lorraine Hansberry moved to Harlem in 1951 and became involved in activist struggles such as the fight against evictions.

In 1951, Hansberry joined the staff of the black newspaper Freedom, edited by Louis E Burnham and published by Paul Robeson.

Lorraine Hansberry traveled to Georgia to cover the case of Willie McGee, and was inspired to write the poem "Lynchsong" about his case.

Lorraine Hansberry worked on not only the US civil rights movement, but global struggles against colonialism and imperialism.

Lorraine Hansberry wrote in support of the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya, criticizing the mainstream press for its biased coverage.

Lorraine Hansberry often explained these global struggles in terms of female participants.

In 1952, Lorraine Hansberry attended a peace conference in Montevideo, Uruguay, in place of Robeson, who had been denied travel rights by the State Department.

On June 20,1953, Lorraine Hansberry married Robert Nemiroff, a Jewish publisher, songwriter, and political activist.

The success of the hit pop song "Cindy, Oh Cindy", co-authored by Nemiroff, enabled Lorraine Hansberry to start writing full-time.

In doing so, he blocked access to all materials related to Lorraine Hansberry's lesbianism, meaning that no scholars or biographers had access for more than 50 years.

Lorraine Hansberry was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play, among the four Tony Awards that the play was nominated for in 1960.

Lorraine Hansberry wrote two screenplays of Raisin, both of which were rejected as controversial by Columbia Pictures.

In 1960, during Delta Sigma Theta's 26th national convention in Chicago, Lorraine Hansberry was made an honorary member.

In 1961, Lorraine Hansberry was set to replace Vinnette Carroll as the director of the musical Kicks and Co, after its try-out at Chicago's McCormick Place.

In 1963, Hansberry participated in a meeting with Attorney General Robert F Kennedy, set up by James Baldwin.

James Baldwin described Hansberry's 1963 meeting with Robert F Kennedy, in which Hansberry asked for a "moral commitment" on civil rights from Kennedy.

Lorraine Hansberry was a critic of existentialism, which she considered too distant from the world's economic and geopolitical realities.

In 1959, Lorraine Hansberry commented that women who are "twice oppressed" may become "twice militant".

Lorraine Hansberry was appalled by the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which took place while she was in high school.

Lorraine Hansberry died of pancreatic cancer on January 12,1965, aged 34.

Lorraine Hansberry's funeral was held in Harlem on January 15,1965.

Lorraine Hansberry is buried at Asbury United Methodist Church Cemetery in Croton-on-Hudson, New York.

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

The Lorraine Hansberry Project is rooted in the convictions that black artists should be at the center of the artistic process, that the community deserves excellence in its art, and that theatre's fundamental function is to put people in a relationship with one another.

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

In 2013, Lorraine Hansberry was inducted into the Legacy Walk, an outdoor public display that celebrates LGBT history and people.

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

In 2017, Lorraine Hansberry was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.

On September 18,2018, the biography Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry, written by scholar Imani Perry, was published by Beacon Press.