Lorraine Hansberry Controversy

The memoir “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” by Zora Neale Hurston, was first published in 1928, and recounts the situation of racial discrimination and prejudice at the time in the United States. The author was born into an all-black community, but was later sent to a boarding school in Jacksonville, where she experienced “race” for the first time. Hurston not only informs the reader how she managed to stay true to herself and her race, but also inspires the reader to abandon any form of racism in their life. Especially by including Humor, Imagery, and Metaphors, the author makes her message very clear: Everyone is equal.

Lorraine Hansberry was born in Chicago on March 19, 1930 Tillman. She was an African American. She was one of four siblings that includes two brothers and one sister. In the 1930’s racism and segregation was prevalent in the time. Her parents were civil rights activist Carl and Nannie Hansberry Tillman. She grew up in the Woodlawn neighborhood on Chicago's South Side Rane. Her family was one of the wealthy African-American families in Chicago. When she was five years old, her parents got her a fur coat. She wore it to school one day and she got beaten for wearing it. Also when she was eight years old she moved to the white suburbs of Chicago and once her and her family arrived at their new homes they were threatened by mobs of white people. She nearly died after getting hit in the head with a brick. Her father went to court to fight for the legal right to live in that new neighborhood.The Supreme Court case of Hansberry v. Lee Weston Playhouse Theater Company. The characters in A Raisin in the Sun are black and live in Chicago just like Hansberry. The characters are also going through segregation/racism, similar to Hansberry.

Hansberry has gone through many challenging milestones having to move to a white suburb neighborhood at age of eight. Hansberry and her family had faced with multiple attacks against them. In the source About the Playwright: Lorraine Hansberry wrote “Shortly afterwards, Hansberry herself was nearly killed by a brick hurled through a window by angry whites” Mobs of white people surround her home since her family is African American. In which connects to her play A Raisin in the sun when Johnson said “NERGROS INVADE CLYBROURNE PARK BOMBED”

Lorraine Hansberry, the author of “A Raisin in The Sun”, was born in Chicago, Illinois. Hansberry was the youngest of four children. Her father Carl Augustus Hansberry was a prominent real estate broker and her mother Louise Perry was a stay home mother. She grew up on the south side of Chicago in the Woodlawn neighborhood. Later the family moved into an all-white neighborhood, where they experienced racial discrimination. Hansberry attended a predominantly white public school while her parents fought against segregation. In 1940 Hansberry’s father engaged in a Supreme Court case of Hansberry v. Lee which was a legal battle against a racially restrictive covenant that attempted to prohibit African-American families from buying homes in the area. As a result in Supreme Court case of Hansberry v. Lee it made the family subject to the hellishly hostile in their predominantly white neighborhood.

Lorraine Hansberry was born in Chicago on May 19, 1930, the youngest of four children. Her parents were well-educated, successful black citizens who publicly fought discrimination against black people. When Hansberry was a child, she and her family lived in a black neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. During this era, segregation—the enforced separation of whites and blacks—was still legal and widespread throughout the South. Northern states, including Hansberry’s own Illinois, had no official policy of segregation, but they were generally self-segregated along racial and economic lines. Chicago was a striking example of a city carved into strictly divided black and white neighborhoods. Hansberry’s family became one of the first to move into

The book Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson is about Jackie and how her childhood during the time of slavery and racism, leads her to be able to become a writer. The book shows how someone’s identity isn’t just based on how you’re born. Identity is how you react to things that are happening on the outside and also things that are happening on the inside. Because of where Jacqueline was living, her family, and the time period she was living in she was able to be inspired and become a writer.

Lorraine Hansberry and Alice Childress are two of the most well known female, African American playwrights. As they both share similar profiles, famous plays of theirs, Wedding Band and Raisin in the Sun, share themes and ideas that are brought about by the way that they have grown up and lived in America. While these themes are the same, the execution and thought upon them do differ and can be identified in these two plays.

Anne is a young, curious, and humble child, but will soon grow into a fiery, determined young woman from Centerville, Ms. At the age fifteen, Anne Moody's fiery spirit began to spark, but flames did not take shape, yet. " I hated the white men who murdered Emmett Till and I hated all the other whites who were responsible for the countless murders... But I also hated the Negroes. I hated them for not standing up and doing something about the murders" (Moody 136). Anne did not agree with either side, but deep down within her.

Her first play, A Raisin In the Sun, is based on her childhood experiences of desegregating a white neighborhood. It won the New York Drama Critic's Circle Award as Best Play of the Year. She was the youngest American, the fifth woman and the first black to win the award. Her success opened the floodgates for a generation of modern black actors and writers who were influenced and encouraged by her writing.

As a child she get jumped when she had a white fur coat on by some children because she was a African American little girl wearing a white fur coat which showed she had money to spend. Yet Lorraine's big step in life was going to a integrated college in Wisconsin Madison with integrating dorms, which she lead the movement for. She was also apart of a newspaper called freedom. The play that she wrote won, first black women who got play of the year, the youngest one to get it and the first women to win it. Her play was performed all over the world, after she died there was a bug funeral for her and the song “To be young gifted and black” was performed.

By the end of Wallace Thurman’s novel, “The Blacker the Berry,” the main character Emma Lou has a revelation about herself. Her whole life she thought her dark skin color prevented her from good opportunities. She was hyper-sensitive towards her color and tried to make up for it by fitting in with the right type of people. She has economic freedom and have fit in with the right type of people. Emma was desperate to fit in with type of people that treated her inferiorly, but once she came to terms with the strength of her African American background, she is able to identify with who she is, a black woman.

For many people, the idea of “finding yourself” or embracing your heritage can be frightening, if not challenging. In both writings, "A Raisin in the Sun" and “How it Feels to be Colored Me”, characters Benethea and Zora dive into their heritage. They not only searched for their true identity, but tackled the challenges within their race. You might be surprised to learn that two seemingly similar writings can have vast differences. Authors Zora Neale Hurston and Lorraine Hansberry develop the idea that one's identity is emboldened through the recognition of racial heritage.

Zora Neale Hurston takes readers on an enlightening, delightful journey into her childhood years before she realized that she is colored and beyond. While Zora is the main character in the story, there are plenty of distinctions she shares about Eatonville, its citizens and the later exposure to feeling “most black [when thrown] against a sharp white background” (p.942) while attending Barnard College which had been an all-white college until she walked through the doors. It’s powerful to know that she had confidence and pride to remain true to herself and her race despite all of the hurdles and roadblocks along her life’s path.

Provident Hospital, May 19, 1930- Lorraine Hansberry was born into this world. Her father founded Lake Street Bank, which was the first bank for the blacks. Despite their middle-class level, the Hansberry family was issued to segregation. Her family went to live in a private community when she was eight years old, and the owners refused to sell property to a black family. With help from Harry H. Pace, president of the Supreme Liberty Life Insurance Company and several white realtors, they were able to secretly buy property for the Hansberry’s. All through Lorraine’s life, she dealt with many racial difficulties. Luckily, she finally found what she needed for herself through writing.

To make a connection of Lorraine Hansberry to the social realism movement, a brief biography can help to explain this relation. Particularly, Lorraine was a black American born in the 1930s to the underprivileged portion of the South Side of Chicago. Being of this era, her father was a very successful real estate agent and her mother, a local school teacher. Still regardless of her family wealth, unfortunately, they are forced to reside in the undesirable poor section of the city, as many other black families had. With prospect opportunities, her family then has the desires to move to a white privileged neighborhood. Here, they are met with much rejection almost immediately that lead her father to take legal actions. Due to the color of their skin, like others, she faced the many complexities of racial segregation, discrimination, and violence. There later became a time to address those issues by way of the Civil Rights Movement, looking to end racial segregation and gain equal opportunities for those of African descent. Noted in an American History Journal, the author emphasized that, “[Critics] maintained that the civil rights movement failed to produce significant reforms in either education or housing, despite vigorous campaigns by local and national organizations”( Broussard 1394 ). Even after the Jim Crow laws of the South were extinguished, many African Americans journeyed to