Lorraine Hansberry gained prominence as the first black among the handful of American women playwrights to have a Broadway success, A Raisin in the Sun (1959). Too often pigeonholed because of her race, sex, and short career, Hansberry deserves more serious attention as a playwright whose work, though somewhat flawed, is noteworthy for its compassion, humor, believable characters, memorable dialogue, and for its creator's efforts to adhere to her aesthetic and political convictions despite the fashions of her day.

Lorraine Vivian Hansberry was born in Chicago, the last of four children in a middle-class family. Her father was a prosperous real-estate broker who founded one of the first Negro banks in Chicago. In an effort to do something about housing discrimination in his city, Carl Hansberry bought a home in an all-white neighborhood in 1938, and in order to stay there, he had to fight a civil-rights case on restricted...