About Lorraine Hansberry
Lorraine Vivian Hansberry was an American playwright and writer. She was the first Black American female author to have a play performed on Broadway. Hansberry's best-known work, the play A Raisin in the Sun, highlights the lives of Black Americans in Chicago living under racial segregation. The title of the play was taken from the poem "Harlem" by Langston Hughes: "What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?" At age 29, she won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award – making Hansberry the first Black American dramatist, the fifth woman, and the youngest playwright to do so. Her family had struggled against segregation, challenging a restrictive covenant in the 1940 U.S. Supreme Court case Hansberry v. Lee. Carl Hansberry's brother, William Leo Hansberry, founded the African Civilization section of the History Department at Howard University.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.