by Dick Mac
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Lorraine Vivian Hansberry was born in Chicago, Illinois, on May 19, 1930, and died of pancreatic cancer in New York City on January 12, 1965. She was a playwright, journalist, and theatrical director.
Hansberry was the first black woman writer to have a play produced on Broadway when Raisin in the Sun premiered. At 29-years-old, she won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, making her the first African-American dramatist and the youngest playwright to do so.
She attended Wisconsin-Madison in the late 1940s, where she became active with the Communist Party and integrated a dormitory. In 1950, she moved to New York City and took a job writing for the "Freedom" newspaper where she worked with W.E.B. DuBois and Paul Robeson.
She enjoyed political and personal success in an era when woman and people of color were rarely afforded success.
Although married to publisher and activist Robert Nemiroff until her death, Hansberry began a relationship with Dorothy Secules around 1960, and the two remained together until Hansberry’s premature death from cancer, at age 35.
Like most of the important, talented and successful African-American women of the 20th Century, she is barely known to the general public. Her talents and her efforts need to be promoted and celebrated, and we need to learn about her at other times then when reading a social media post in the month of February.
Listen to her speech "The Black Revolution and the White Backlash"https://youtu.be/wqxjc7PULJ8
#blackhistorymonth #BlackLivesMatter #WorkForChange