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.