Lorraine Hansberry

Lorraine Hansberry was a visionary playwright and activist who dared to live life to the fullest.

Her brilliance, charm, and radical spirit echo through every line of her plays.

She won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Best Play Award for A Raisin’ in the Sun and was the first Black playwright and youngest American to do so.

She was also a courageous activist who wrote for Paul Robeson’s newspaper, Freedom, for years. She wrote about imperialism, colonialism, racism, sexism, and homophobia—given that she was, in her own words, a “heterosexually married lesbian.”

Here’s what a few of her friends had to say about her.

“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”~Nina Simone

“Lorraine made no bones about asserting that art has a purpose, and that its purpose was action: that it contained the ‘energy which could change things.” ~James Baldwin