The first African American and the youngest woman to win the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, Hansberry is best known for her play A Raisin in the Sun (1959). The story of a black working-class family and their decision to move into a white neighborhood, the play helped pioneer the acceptance of black drama by Broadway producers and audiences. Although dismissed by some militant blacks as assimilationist, A Raisin in the Sun nevertheless garnered praise for its sensitive and revealing portrait of a black family in America. It has also attracted attention for its depiction of strong African American female characters who strive against a male-dominated society.

Biographical Information

Hansberry was born into a middle-class family on Chicago's south side in 1930. Around the age of seven, Hansberry and her family moved into a restricted white neighborhood, deliberately violating the city's "covenant laws" that legally sanctioned housing discrimination. When...