Lorraine Hansberry
OP-ED by Clifford Jackson
January 12 2025 was the sixtieth anniversary of the death of Lorraine Hansberry. She was a brilliant writer , playwright and human rights activist. She was the first African American Female to have her plays performed on Broadway as well as being the first African American Female dramatist to win the New York Drama Critics Circle Award.
She Authored a number of plays, her production of “ raisin in the sun “ was her signature composition that was a reflection of the racist housing policies that have existed throughout the history of this country. It premiered on Broadway at the Ethel Barrymore theater in March 1959 and was made into a movie in 1961 starring young and upcoming actors like Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee, Ivan Dixon and Lou Gossett.
The play not only reflected the brutal racist housing policies that were in place in the plays venue of Chicago but was also an expression of what Lorraine Hansberry and her family went through where they were restricted because of a racial covenant that prevented Carl Hansberry , Lorraine Hansberrys father, from moving their family into the Washington Park neighborhood in Chicago. This racist housing policy orchestrated by the all white community in Washington park was in effect in every state of the country at that time.
Carl Hansberry took these racist housing owners to court where it reached the Supreme Court in 1940 in the case of “ Hansberry vs Lee”. Every white person reading this piece , including the editor, should understand that these racial covenants as well as redlining is the reason why you have “ lily white “ suburban communities in this country to this day.
These racist housing policies were a part of Federal Housing Assistance (FHA) Loans that were given to white familes 98 percent of those issued , and along with the racist policy of the G.I. Bill that for the most part allowed whites access to jobs, purchase homes and get an education , and that excluded black and brown people from the same access . That is how white suburbia got started, not the myth of hard work by white immigrants.
This is what spurred on Lorraine Hansberry and her fight for racial equality as well as gender equality in this country. Her father Carl Hansberry in an effort to move his family from all of the racism in this country died in Mexico in 1946 from a stroke that was related to all of the stress from the evils of racism in this country , which also motivated Lorraine Hansberry to fight for social justice in her artistic and aesthetic way.
This led to her involvement with “ Freedomways” a publication that dealt with the intellectual analysis of the human rights and colonial struggles of people of color against the racism and apartheid conditions of the white western world. Hansberry joined it in 1961 with Dr . W. E. B. Dubois as the editor.
Hansberry worked with him and greats like Paul Robeson and Kwame Nkrumah, writing and organizing against the apartheid system in America and the anti-colonial movement that was going on at the time in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Lorraine Hansberry was also a part of the LGBTQ Community and she was good friends with the honorable James Baldwin.
There was a meeting at the Manhattan Apartment of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy arranged by James Baldwin on May 24, 1963, with Lorraine Hansberry, James Baldwin’s brother David, Harry Belafonte, Actor Rip Torn, Lena Horne, Psychologist and Westchester County resident Kenneth Clark, Clarence Jones civil rights lawyer and aide to Dr. King and several others including Burke Marshal, RFK’s chief aide at the justice department.
The urgency of the civil rights movement was the main reason that Baldwin scheduled this meeting. Hansberry pressed Kennedy and Marshal on the issue of American Apartheid in this country, and they seemed not to understand the gravity of it, and frustrated she left the meeting.
She also knew Malcolm X and developed a friendship and mutual understanding after confronting Malcolm X about his stance concerning interracial marriage that Malcolm X at one time was against. Hansberry had been married to someone white.
Lorraine Hansberry was diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer in 1964 and died January 12, 1965. Paul Robeson and Malcolm X attended her funeral. She is buried at Bethel Cemetery on Croton on the Hudson here in Westchester County. Lorraine Hansberry was an expression of the best of humanity. She was a beautiful woman who fought against the evil history of this country and the sub-human treatment of black and brown people by white America.
Unfortunately, many people, especially people of color, do not know who she is because of the criminal and vile aspects of American history, like we are seeing today, with the banning of books and erasing of history.
