Lorraine Hansberry

born 1930, died 1965

In 1959, Lorraine Hansberry's play A Raisin in the Sun opened on Broadway.
With this opening, Hansberry became the first African-American woman
to write a Broadway play. The Broadway production of A Raisin in the 
Sun, the poignant story of the Younger family, also introduced actor
Sidney Poitier. At age twenty-nine, Hansberry's became the only 
African-American to ever win the Best Play of the Year Award of the 
New York Drama Critics. Other works include The Sign in Sidney Brustein's
Window, Les Blancs, The Drinking Gourd, and What Use are Flowers?
To Be Young, Gifted, and Black: Lorraine Hansberry in Her Own
Words, a biographical work drawn from letters, plays, and journals, was 
posthumously published in 1969. Hansberry died of cancer at age thirty-four.