Looking for Lorraine – The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry

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By Imani Perry

Published by Beacon Press 2018

A review by Steve Halpern

Oftentimes we listen to appeals of celebrities for support. Oftentimes we see how the causes they promote, fall short of working to liberate humanity from the dog-eat-dog world we live in today.

Lorraine Hansberry was the first Black woman playwright who wrote a commercially successful play. Imani Perry has written a wonderful biography of Hansberry, introducing us to the fact that she was much more than a playwright. We can begin to look at the life of Hansberry by looking at her groundbreaking play A Raisin in the Sun. This play paralleled several events in Lorraine Hansberry’s early life.

Before looking at this play, I think it is useful to look at the poem by Hansberry’s friend Langston Hughes that gave her the idea for the title.

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore—

and then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar sweet?

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

A Raisin in the Sun and the Hansberry family

A Raisin in the Sun portrays an African American family that received an inheritance of $10,000. The family decided to use this money to move into a predominantly “white” neighborhood in Chicago. The son of this family didn’t want to accept the fact that he would live his life as a second-class citizen because of the color of his skin. So, he invested this inheritance and was swindled out of the money. The family then deals with the aftermath of this situation.

Lorraine Hansberry grew up in Chicago. Her mother, Nannie, was born in Tennessee and her father, Carl, was raised in Mississippi. They were both college educated and joined what has been called The Great Migration to Chicago.

Carl Hansberry understood that Chicago was a segregated city and there was a housing shortage for Black people on the south side. He dealt with this problem by buying apartment houses and cutting them up into smaller residences. He became known as the “kitchenette king.”

However, Carl Hansberry eventually became frustrated with segregation and purchased a home in a “white” section of the city. The Hansberry family was then harassed and attacked by racists who wanted them out of the neighborhood.

Carl Hansberry took his case to the Supreme Court and won. However, this did not change the segregated character of Chicago. As a result, Carl Hansberry grew so frustrated with the racism in this country, and planned to move to Mexico. He died suddenly in Mexico, in an attempt to escape from the nation that claims to represent “liberty and justice for all.”

Lorraine Hansberry went to college in Madison, Wisconsin. She wasn’t an outstanding student, but was an avid reader as well as an artist. She spent one summer at an artist colony at Ajijic, Mexico. She eventually dropped out of college and moved to New York City.

The political life of Lorraine Hansberry

In New York she became an ardent student of W.E.B. DuBois and worked for a newspaper of the Communist Party in Harlem. Dubois became a beacon of the anti-racist struggle in this country. While he was the editor of the NAACP newspaper, Crisis, this paper was popular with African Americans all over the country.

Lorraine Hansberry has this to say about DuBois at his memorial meeting:

“I do not remember when I first heard the name DuBois. For some Negros it comes into consciousness so early, so persistently that it is like the spirituals or blues or discussions of oppression, he was a fact of our culture. People spoke of him as they did the church or the nation.”  

During this time she was developing her vision of the world and became a communist. This meant that she wasn’t just opposed to segregation in this country, but also supported the liberation movements in Africa and around the world.

She eventually married Robert (Bobby) Nemiroff who was a Jewish songwriter. While she maintained a friendship with Nemiroff, Hansberry became a lesbian and wrote for a magazine that celebrated the lesbian lifestyle. We should recall that this was in the 1950’s, well before the mass demonstrations of gay pride in this country.

After A Raisin in the Sun was a hit on Broadway, Lorraine Hansberry became a celebrity. She developed close friendships with James Baldwin and Nina Simone. Imani Perry dedicated a chapter in her book to these friendships. The title of this chapter is The Trinity. These three friends shared abilities for artistic excellence, as well as an unwavering dedication to the struggle for human dignity.

James Baldwin, for me, wrote some of the most incisive critiques of the United States. He was critical of people who adapted to racism arguing that they were, in effect, “impaled” in a mindless way of thinking. He argued that the only way to become a mature human being and experience some level of freedom is to challenge the oppressive trend of history, as well as the status quo of racial discrimination.

Many of Baldwin’s ideas were in line with Lorraine Hansberry. He viewed their relationship as similar to brother and sister. However, Baldwin was not a communist and Hansberry was. While they deeply appreciated each other, and drank together, they also had animated fights where they shouted at one another. After one of these fights Lorraine said: “Really, Jimmy. You ain’t right, child.” She then handed Baldwin another drink.

This is what Lorraine Hansberry had to say about the writings of James Baldwin: “in his essays .  .  .(he) has taken the politeness out of discussions of the brutalizing experience of the black man in this country and put it down as it is. I think Mr. Baldwin has left the apologists, black and white, nowhere to go but toward the truth.”

This is what Nina Simone had to say about her discussions with Hansberry:

“We never talked about men or clothes or other such inconsequential things when we got together. It was always Marx, Lenin and revolution—real girls’ talk.”

In a memorial to Lorraine Hansberry, Nina Simone wrote her song: To be Young, Gifted and Black. The idea for the title of this song came from a speech of Hansberry to a group of young writers. She said:

“The Nation Needs Your Gifts.”

“though it be a thrilling and marvelous thing to be merely young and gifted in such times, it is doubly so to be young, gifted and black.” “You are .  .  .the product of a presently insurgent and historically vivacious and heroic culture, a culture of an indomitable will for freedom and aspiration to dignity.”

On May 24, 1963 Lorraine Hansberry was among a group of activists who met with the then Attorney General, Robert F. Kennedy. Kennedy wanted to diffuse the struggle against Jim Crow segregation that had erupted in Birmingham, Alabama. He thought that he might use this group, that also included James Baldwin and Harry Belafonte, to diffuse this struggle.

Kennedy clearly didn’t appreciate the growing sentiment of Black pride that was emerging in this country. Earlier that year while Baldwin toured the South, he had this to say:

“There is, I should think, no Negro living in America who has not felt, briefly or for long periods, simple, naked, unanswerable hatred; who has not wanted to smash any white face he may encounter.  .  .to break the bodies of all white people and bring them low, as low as that dusk in which he himself has been and is being trampled.”

The Congress of Racial Equality leader Jerome Smith was in New York at that time, recovering from a head wound he received while protesting for civil rights. He also attended this meeting and argued that Kennedy was insincere when he spoke about protecting the rights of African Americans.

Kennedy was dismissive of those remarks, and this angered Hansberry. She let out her rage saying to Kennedy:

“You have a great many accomplished people in this room, Mr. Attorney General, but the only man you should be listening to is that man (Jerome Smith) over there. That is the voice of twenty-two million people.”

Smith continued and spoke about how Black families were trying to defend themselves against racist mobs. Hansberry then responded by saying:

“That’s all true, but I am not worried about black men—who have done splendidly, it seems to me, all things considered.” “But I am very worried .  .  . about the state of civilization which produced that photograph of the white cop standing on that Negro woman’s neck in Birmingham.”

At this point Hansberry walked out of the meeting and most of those in the group followed her.

Clearly it was the mass movement for civil rights that forced the government to abolish Jim Crow segregation. However, looking at the life of Lorraine Hansberry, we can see how she played an important part of that movement.

Today the system of Jim Crow has been replaced with a system of mass incarceration that targets Black men and women. However, when we think of the enormous struggle we need to carry out, we can also think about the name of Lorraine Hansberry. In her short life, she was a clear example how a truly gifted artist can make a profound contribution to the universal struggle for human dignity.     

           

Brett Kavanaugh, Entitlements, and the Presumption of Innocence

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By Steven Halpern

The hearings to examine Brett Kavanaugh’s qualifications to become a Supreme Court Justice have received international coverage. The charge by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her while they were in high school has also become an international issue.

These hearings have opened up a discussion on several issues that effect working people. They include: violence against women, the presumption of innocence, the so-called entitlements of the affluent, as well as how the law is interpreted. In this blog I will attempt to examine each of these issues.

Violence against women

In Dr. Ford’s testimony, we viewed a compelling story of how she was sexually assaulted. One reason why this testimony was so compelling is because we know that sexual assault is pervasive in this country. We are talking about rape, beatings, verbal abuse, as well as indifference by authorities to these charges.

Understanding how pervasive this horrendous problem is, we can begin to understand why Dr. Ford took 35 years to come forward before making these charges.

Anita Hill made charges of repeated sexual harassment on her job while she worked for Clarence Thomas. This was in his confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court. The result was that Thomas is now a Supreme Court Justice.

However, the violence against women isn’t just about assault. In what has been called The Second Wave of Feminism women have made advances on several fronts. It is useful to think about the reality of about fifty years ago. Only a tiny percentage of women were doctors. Women didn’t have the right to own homes in many states. Women who chose not to have a child needed to risk mutilation and even death with back alley abortionists.

While women have made many advances in recent years, on the average, women continue to receive a lower rate of pay than men. It is on the job that women often experience sexual harassment, or abusive treatment by male supervisors. After work, women are usually the ones who care for the children as well as to do most household chores.  

Every year corporations spend about $200 billion on advertising. Much of this money goes towards making women insecure about their appearance. The image these advertisers promote is the Victoria Secret runway model. Their goal is to convince women to purchase billions of dollars worth of clothes, jewelry, cosmetics, and even plastic surgery in order to conform to this image they promote.

By making women, in effect, second-class citizens, corporations gouge out profits. They do this by paying women less, and refusing to pay for the day care of children.

We should keep in mind a reality that the so-called educational system in this country isn’t interested in. In her book Woman’s Evolution, Evelyn Reed documented how for most of human history women experienced full equality.

Reed looked at various so-called primitive people from all over the world. She gave the evidence showing how women did some of the most important work in these societies. She also showed how this work was respected.

In the area of New York state lived and continue to live the people known as the Iroquois or Haudenosaunee. The women of the Iroquois organized themselves as the Clan Mothers. These Clan Mothers had the power to depose leaders known as Sachems. Making political decisions without the approval of the Clan Mothers was unthinkable to the Iroquois.    

Working people need to rediscover this history and promote the full liberation of women, on the job, as well as in all social environments. Without working for every aspect of liberation for women, working people can never hope to free ourselves from the exploitative system of wage labor.

The presumption of innocence

Clearly when a woman accuses someone of assault, these charges need to be taken seriously. However, we might also consider a new museum in Montgomery, Alabama of about 4,000 victims of lynchings by racist mobs. Many of those lynchings took place because of false accusations of sexual assault.

Three of those lynchings took place in Memphis, Tennessee and Ida Wells wrote about them in her newspaper. As a result, racists threatened her life and she needed to leave the city. However, Wells continued to report on over 700 lynchings and found that they were nothing more than acts of racist terror.

We can also say that today the United States has more prisoners in it’s dungeons than any other nation in the world. Over 90% of those in prison were not convicted of anything. These prisoners serve time because of plea bargains. Someone accused of a crime is given the choice of admitting guilt or facing a trial where they might receive a much longer sentence.

Understanding this reality, workers need to support the demand that all defendants have the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. Without this basic right anyone could be taken into custody and sentenced to a jail term with the flimsiest of evidence.

Understanding this we might consider that Brett Kavanaugh is not facing a jail term for alleged sexual assault. The testimony of Dr. Ford was in the context of his nomination for a Supreme Court Justice. Kavanaugh invited this scrutiny when he accepted the nomination.

The so-called entitlements of the affluent

Dr. Ford testified that the most difficult part of the assault against her was when the assailants laughed at what they were doing. Clearly, these assailants felt that they had some kind of entitlement to assault a young woman. Kavanaugh attended the so-called elite private high school Georgetown Prep.

Working people are raised in an environment where we are trained to do as we are told. However, parents don’t pay the exorbitant tuition costs of Georgetown Prep so their children will work in a factory. No, students attending these schools are trained to become the most highly paid managers of corporations or the government. In other words, they are taught how to become arrogant in their slavish pursuit of gouging out profits for corporations.

As a worker, I’ve been one of millions of workers who are witnesses to this disparity. While we toil at one or more jobs every day, managers sit in corporate boardrooms. They discuss how to get us to do more so the corporation can gouge out a maximum profit. These managers have the same sense of entitlement that students learn about at the so-called elite private schools.

We know something about Brett Kavanaugh that is common to all politicians who support the capitalist system. These politicians believe in the fantasy that there is a significant difference between the Democratic and Republican Parties.

I’m 65 years old and have experienced both Democratic and Republican dominated governments. Throughout all those years all I’ve seen was a deterioration in the standard of living of working people. While this deterioration has unfolded, the number of people who are locked up in dungeons has skyrocketed.

The law and the working class

When I attended high school, every day my teachers asked me to stand up, place my hand on my heart, and to pledge allegiance to a flag that the government claims represents “liberty and justice for all.” As working people learn the reality of this country, we also learn the absurdity of this argument.

The history of the Supreme Court is that they consistently supported both slavery and Jim Crow segregation. The Court’s consistent support of Jim Crow was in complete violation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. However, it wasn’t until the year 1967 that the Supreme Court ruled that it was legal to have an inter-racial marriage.

According to the Constitution citizens are supposed to have freedom of speech. However, most workers understand that if we attempt to organize a union where we work, employers can and will find ways to terminate union organizers.

When we think about the reality of the capitalist system, we see that it is a system that extracts wealth from the labor of workers. Another word for this is theft. This kind of theft is perfectly legal. When we think of the fact that police officers are rarely put on trial for murders they commit, we have to question whether murder is in fact against the law.

We can also point to the millions of people who have been murdered in so-called wars that the United States government never declared. So, in reality, only certain murders are illegal, while the government has no problem with absolving itself of other murders.

Anyone can Google the words Invisible War. This is a film that documents how there have been over 20,000 rapes in the military every year. In most of these rapes the perpetrators were not placed on trial. In some cases, commanding officers covered up for rapists, while continuing to give orders to the victims. Understanding the reality of this film, we can ask the question: Is rape illegal in the United States of America?

When we look at these and many other facts, there is one inescapable conclusion. The legal system in this country in not interested in defending the basic rights of working people.

This brings me back to that Pledge of Allegiance that my teachers asked me to recite many years ago. The Pledge of Allegiance was written by Francis Bellamy. Francis Bellamy was the first cousin and co-thinker of Edward Bellamy who wrote the novel Looking Backward.

Edward Bellamy imagined a future world that was devoid of poverty and based on human solidarity. Francis Bellamy’s original Pledge contained the words: “I pledge allegiance to my flag.” For Francis Bellamy his flag represented the future world his cousin Edward imagined in his book Looking Backward. He imagined that in that world there would be liberty, justice, and equality for all.

Francis Bellamy refrained from using the word equality because in the late 1800s most people in this country didn’t have the right to vote. However, Edward Bellamy titled his sequel to his book Looking Backward, Equality.

The hearings around the issue of Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination underscore for me why working people need a completely different political economic system. In that system women will be totally liberated because an injury to one will be an injury to all. In that system, workers will no longer be alienated from work and the worst crimes will be seen as the drive to maximize profits from the labor of workers.

In that system workers won’t think about entitlements, but of basic rights that are guaranteed to all. These will include a lifetime right to: food, clothing, a place to live, education, health care, transportation, communication, as well as exposure to cultural activities.

So, when workers living in that kind of future world look back at the hearings around Kavanaugh’s nomination, they will ask a basic question: Why did humanity ever engage in this kind of seemingly perverse insanity?