Lorraine Hansberry

Lorraine Hansberry ( born May 19, 1930 in Chicago, † January 12, 1965 in New York, NY) was an American playwright and litigant in the case of Hansberry v. Lee before the Supreme Court of the United States.

Life

Hansberry was born in Chicago (Illinois ), the youngest of four children of Carl Augustus Hansberry stockbroker and Nannie Perry Hansberry. She grew up in the Woodlawn Neighborhood to the south of Chicago.

The family later moved into a coined by white citizens neighborhood in which she found racial discrimination. While Hansberry went on a visit of predominantly white public school students, their parents fought against segregation, ie the racial segregation in the United States at that time. Her father was in litigation against an agreement that African- American families should ban the purchase of homes in the area. This dispute about moving eventually led to the landmark decision in the case of Hansberry v. Lee, 311 U.S. 32 (1940 ) before the Supreme Court, which came out in favor of the family. These experiences inspired Lorraine Hansberry later to write her most famous work A Raisin in the Sun.

She died in 1965 at the age of 34 from pancreatic cancer.

Filmography

• 2008: A Raisin in the Sun ( TV movie )