The first African American and the youngest woman to win the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, Hansberry is best known for her play A Raisin in the Sun (1959). The story of a black working-class family and their decision to move into a white...

(born May 19, 1930, Chicago, Ill., U.S.—died Jan. 12, 1965, New York, N.Y.) American playwright whose A Raisin in the Sun (1959) was the first drama by an African American woman to be produced on Broadway. Hansberry was interested in writing from...

A black American playwright who produced only two plays before her death from cancer at 34, Lorraine Hansberry nonetheless made a tremendous contribution to the American stage and to African American culture. Her first and best known play, A Raisin in...

(born May 19, 1930, Chicago, Ill., U.S.—died Jan. 12, 1965, New York, N.Y.) U.S. playwright. Her first play was A Raisin in the Sun (1959), a penetrating psychological study of a working-class African American family in Chicago. The first drama...

Lorraine Hansberry (May 19, 1930 - January 12, 1965) was an American playwright and litigant in the United States Supreme Court case, Hansberry v....