"Les Blancs" … is the play that Lorraine Hansberry left unfinished at her death in 1965 and it is as if the American racial dilemma of that time has been permanently frozen into her script. It is very strange to watch this play and, in a very real way, actually see the intelligent American mind of five years ago, struggling between old concepts of liberalism-civil rights and new ideas of militance….

Miss Hansberry's tragically brief playwriting career charted the postwar steps in the racial movement, from working within the system ("A Raisin in the Sun") to a burgeoning distrust of white liberals ("The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window") to the association with Africa in "Les Blancs" that would evolve, after her death, from the ashes of passive resistance into the energy and danger of militant activism.

In "Les Blancs," Miss Hansberry was trying to cleanse herself of traditional ideas of...