Lorraine Vivian Hansberry
Lorraine Vivian Hansberry
May 19, 1930 – January 12, 1965
The first African America woman to write a play performed on Broadway, Lorraine Vivian Hansberry bought her Greenwich Village home in 1960. Best known for A Raisin in the Sun about living under racial segregation in Chicago, the title came from Langston Hughes’ poem Harlem. Her family was involved in civil rights, prompting the Supreme Court case Hansberry v. Lee. She moved to NYC in 1950, attended the New School and wrote for Paul Robeson’s Pan-Africanist newspaper Freedom. In 1953 she married producer Robert Nemiroff, a champion of her works as her literary executor. She was involved with the country’s first lesbian political organization, The Daughters of Bilitis, contributing two letters to their magazine The Ladder. Her political engagement drew the attention and surveillance of the FBI. She inspired Nina Simone's song To Be Young, Gifted and Black.
Submitted by The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation