Maya Angelou admired the art of Hansberry and Abbey Lincoln. The play, with themes both universally human and specifically about racial discrimination and sexist attitudes, was successful and won a Tony Award for Best Musical. The Hansberrys were a proud middle class family, who valued social and political involvement. Princeton, NJ 08544, We cannot accommodate requests to reach Faculty Emeriti or Advisory Council members, 2023 The Trustees of Princeton University, Reflections on African American Studies Lectures, The Good of All: Lorraine Hansberry's radical imagination. On the night before their wedding in 1953, Nemiroff and Hansberry protested against the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in New York City. Kicks. Lorraine Hansberry was rigorous and unyielding in her life, but she was gone too soon and claimed too quickly by those who thought they understood her. . God wrote it through me." Within two years, it was translated into 35 different languages and was performed all over the world. James Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry forged "an intimate intellectual companionship" that was cut short by Hansberry's untimely death at the age of 34 in 1965. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Civil Rights Leader, Biography of Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Journalist Who Fought Racism, Biography of Rosa Parks, Civil Rights Pioneer, StudentNonviolent Coordinating Committee, Lorraine Hansberry, Creator of A Raisin in the Sun, M.Div., Meadville/Lombard Theological School. Lorraine Hansberry (1930 - 1965) was an American playwright and author best known for A Raisin in the Sun, a 1959 play influenced by her background and upbringing in Chicago. [8] She spent the summer of 1949 in Mexico, studying painting at the University of Guadalajara. His death was attributed to his mother's smoking. The statue will be sent on a tour of major US cities. At times, this commitment caused her to focus more on politics than on her art, and at times it put her at odds with her less radical peers. Hansberry's classmate Bob Teague remembered her as "the only girl I knew who could whip together a fresh picket sign with her own hands, at a moment's notice, for any cause or occasion". Moving with her husband to Croton-on-Hudson, Lorraine Hansberry continued not only her writing but also her involvement with civil rights and other political protests. The play appeared in book form the following year under the title, To Be Young, Gifted and Black: Lorraine Hansberry in Her Own Words . "[55], Hansberry was a critic of existentialism, which she considered too distant from the world's economic and geopolitical realities. Her own family's landmark court . The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window closed on the night of her death. Hansberry's funeral was held in Harlem and Paul Robeson and SNCC organizer James Forman gave eulogies. Lorraine Vivian Hansberry was born May 19, 1930 at the beginning of the Great Depression. She died at her home in Monroe, Connecticut. [19], Like Robeson and many black civil rights activists, Hansberry understood the struggle against white supremacy to be interlinked with the program of the Communist Party. The moving story of the life of the woman behind A Raisin in the Sun, the most widely anthologized, read, and performed play of the American stage, by the New York Times bestselling author of Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee Written when she was just twenty-eight, Lorraine Hansberry's landmark A Raisin in the Sun is listed by the National Theatre as one of the hundred most significant . Lorraine Vivian Hansberry, a renowned essayist, playwright, and civil rights activist, was born on May 19th, 1930, in Chicago, Illinois. Paul Robeson and SNCC organizer James Forman gave eulogies. Performers in this pageant included Paul Robeson, his longtime accompanist Lawrence Brown, the multi-discipline artist Asadata Dafora, and numerous others. And this was John Proctor and "The Crucible". PerrysLooking for Lorrainejoins a growing body of histories and biographies seeking to recover the political traditions of the black radicals of the 1940s, 50s, and 60s. MAMA (Not liking the Lord's name used thus) Bennie! This is a short thirty-minute lesson on Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. MLARothberg, Emma. Lorraine Hansberry attended the University of Wisconsin for two years and she briefly attended the Art Institute in Chicago, where she studied painting. At her funeral, held at the Church of the Master near Harlems Morningside Park, some 700 mourners filled the church. Whites fought back. [41] Upon his ex-wife's death, Robert Nemiroff donated all of Hansberry's personal and professional effects to the New York Public Library. When inclusion meant an entrance into the unequal distribution of power and wealtheven when it meant her own material gainHansberry wanted no part of it. She moved to Harlem in 1951[12] and became involved in activist struggles such as the fight against evictions. After her death Nemiroff finished and produced her final work, Les Blancs, a play about African liberation. and died after 2 days. [72], Also in 2013, Hansberry was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame.[73]. Their goal is to create a space where the entire community can be enriched by the voices of professional black artists, reflecting autonomous concerns, investigations, dreams, and artistic expression. Hansberrys father died of a cerebral hemorrhage when she was 15. Patricia and Fredrick McKissack wrote a children's biography of Hansberry, Young, Black, and Determined, in 1998. [8], She worked on Henry A. Wallace's Progressive Party presidential campaign in 1948, despite her mother's disapproval. The show ran for more than two years and won two Tony Awards, including Best Musical. Hughes meant to represent the race in his writing and he was, perhaps, the most original of all African American poets. tags: love. Hansberry died the year prior, at the age of 34, after a battle with pancreatic cancer. F: (609) 258-3484, Morrison Hall Lorraine Hansberry was the youngest of four children born to Carl Augustus Hansberry, a successful real-estate broker and Nannie Louise (born Perry), a driving school teacher and ward committeewoman. Although Lorraine Hansberry had married, she identified as a lesbian. Hansberry was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1930. Hansberry met Jewish publisher and activist Robert Nemiroff on a picket line and they were married in 1953, spending the night before their wedding protesting the execution of the Rosenbergs. 2022. www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/lorraine_Hansberry. The night Nina Simone debuted at Carnegie Hall, Hansberry called not to congratulate her but to discuss what she could do to aid the civil rights movement. Lorraine Hansberry was committed to radical honesty about the state of the world. She worked on the 1948 presidential campaign for the Progressive Party, wrote in support of the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya, and covered the case of an African American man executed after an all-white jury deliberated his case for three minutes. She wrote and published A Raisin in the Sun in 1959. A Contemporary Theatre (ACT) was their first incubator and in 2012 they became an independent organization. Anderson, "Freedom Family" (2008), p. 263. Students will analyze the life of Hon. As she recounted inTo Be Young, Gifted, and Black, the black students from a nearby school, the children of the Unqualified Oppressed, came pouring out of the bowels of the ghetto to demonstrate. That's the way I always felt about. Weakened by the disease, she moved into a hotel next to the theater so shed be closer to the rehearsals. For Hansberry, the failures of nonviolent protest not only were a matter of tactics but also reflected the intransigence of her generationa theme she explored inThe Sign in Sidney Brusteins Window. Like many other Black giants of her time,. The Hansberry Project is rooted in the convictions that black artists should be at the center of the artistic process, that the community deserves excellence in its art, and that theatre's fundamental function is to put people in a relationship with one another. Lorraine Hansberry (May 19, 1930 - January 12, 1965) was an American playwright and author. Black freedom, for Hansberry, required amplifying the voices of the black working class. Mama also imagines a garden that she can tend along with her dream house. While many of her other writings were published in her lifetime essays, articles, and the text for the SNCC book The Movement: Documentary of a Struggle for Equality[49] the only other play given a contemporary production was The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window. Nemiroff would become a financially successful songwriter. In her will, she designated Nemiroff as executor of her literary estate. Lorraine Hansberry AKA Lorraine Vivian Hansberry Born: 19-May - 1930 Birthplace: Chicago, IL Died: 12-Jan - 1965 Location of death: New York City Cause of death: Cancer - Pancreatic Remains: Buried, Bethel Cemetery, Croton-on-Hudson, NY Gender: Female Race or Ethnicity: Black Sexual orientation: Bisexual [1] Occupation: Playwright Carter, "Commitment amid Complexity" (1980), p. 43. In March of 1952, when Robeson couldnt attend a conference in Uruguay because the United States had stripped him of his passport for being a communist, he sent Hansberry in his stead. Three weeks after Lorraines funeral, on Nina [Simone]s birthday, Malcolm was murdered. In the poems middle section, the hinge connecting racism at home and abroad appears in one perfect line: Black boy in a window; Algiers and Salerno. While her life would undergo many changes in the coming years, the view from this window would remain her compass. Lorraine Hansberry died on January 12, 1965. [5][13] She wrote in support of the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya, criticizing the mainstream press for its biased coverage. Although critical reception was cool, supporters kept it running until Lorraine Hansberry's death in January. As a playwright, feminist, and racial justice activist, Hansberry never shied away from tough topics during her short and extraordinary life. Nina Simone dedicated a song to her. Anderson, "Freedom Family" (2008), p. 267. Tea parties at the White House for the few will not make up for 300 years of wrong to the many. Hansberry v. Lee (1940) helped outlaw legal housing discrimination across the United States. Despite a warm reception in Chicago, the show never made it to Broadway. Most people these days know Hansberry forA Raisin in the Sun, a play that took housing segregation as its subject. Though Carl Hansberry ultimately prevailed in a Supreme Court case,Hansberry v. Lee, in 1940, his daughters experience in Washington Park taught her that wealth and the legal system provided no guaranteed security against racism. It seems, in fact, that, as with her dear friend the author James Baldwin, Hansberry is having a curiously vibrant renaissance some 54 years after her death, at the age of thirty-four from pancreatic cancer, on January 12, 1965. The Hansberrys lived above Ray Hansborough, a member of the Communist Party and secretary of the National Negro Commission, and Carl Hansberry worked with Truman Gibson Sr., the executive director of the American Negro Exposition, a kind of African American Worlds Fair. At the same time, she said, "some of the first people who have died so far in this struggle have been white men. The decision is nevertheless considered to have been an early weakening in the restrictive covenants that enforced segregation nationally. Anderson, "Freedom Family" (2008), p. 260. Lorraine Vivian Hansberry (May 19, 1930 January 12, 1965) was a playwright and writer. The fascinating facts about Lorraine Hansberry following illustrate her development as a Black woman, activist, and writer. "[61], Hansberry's funeral was held in Harlem on January 15, 1965. Put off by the 'frantic dispatches about the "terrorists" and "witchcraft societies" in the colony' that preceded the December 1952 publication of her article, Hansberry criticized anti Mau Mau coverage that only 'distort[ed] the fight for freedom by the five million Masai, Wahamba, Kavirondo, and Kikuyu people who [made] up the African people of Kenya.'". She expressed a desire for a future in which "Nobody fights. The plays popular reception proved, over the years, to be a gift and a curse. What are the three most interesting facts about Lorraine Hansberry's life? Thus, Hansberry became deeply familiar with pan-African ideas and the international contours of black liberation at an early age (8).". Many of her mentors were attacked for being Communists, but Hansberry escaped this persecution because she was relatively unknown. Gypsy Rose Lee. [53], The FBI began surveillance of Hansberry when she prepared to go to the Montevideo peace conference. [8] Carl died in 1946 when Lorraine was fifteen years old; "American racism helped kill him," she later said.[9]. A Raisin in the Sun debuted on Broadway in 1959. They took their case all the way to the Supreme Court. She addressed social issues in her writings. Playwright Lorraine Hansberry discusses her play "A Raisin in the Sun" and theater in general; last 10 minutes is a reading of "Chicago: South Side Summers" from "To Be Young, Gifted, and Black." Orginal air date is 05/12/1959 . Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart, American Masters, PBS, January 19, 2018, https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/lorraine-hansberry-sighted-eyesfeeling-heart-documentary/9846/, Emma Z. Rothberg, Ph.D. | Associate Educator, Digital Learning & Innovation. During the meeting, Kennedy spoke to the more famous intellectuals, ignoring Jerome Smith, a founder of the New Orleans chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality. Both Hansberrys were active in the Chicago Republican Party. By the second half of the 1960s, many of the most influential and increasingly radical voices of the civil rights movement were being extinguished prematurely. As a playwright, feminist, and racial justice activist, Hansberry never shied away from tough topics during her short and extraordinary life. Hansberry's uncle, William Leo Hansberry, was a distinguished professor of African history at Howard University and had made a name for himself as a specialist in African antiquity. As she grew older, these commitments manifested themselves in an increasingly radical politics. Walter Lee wants to invest Mama's $10,000 insurance check in a liquor store venture with two of his friends. In 1964, "The Movement: Documentary of a Struggle for Equality" was published for SNCC (StudentNonviolent Coordinating Committee) with text by Hansberry. [62], Hansberry's ex-husband, Robert Nemiroff, became the executor for several unfinished manuscripts. At this time, she and her husband separated, but they continued to work together. Du Bois, whose office was in the same building, and other Black Pan-Africanists. But in 1957 she wrote two letters to a magazine published by the Daughters of Bilitis, the nation's first organization for lesbians. This made her the first Chicago native to be honored along the North Halsted corridor. Nemiroff, a white, Jewish writer, shared many of Hansberrys political views. Du Bois. During this time, she generated support for the Student Non-Violent Coordination Committee (SNCC), which aimed to end segregation in the south, and spoke out against the House Un-American Activities Committee. The influence of her parents social network, combined with her early exposure to racism, helped radicalize Hansberry when she was still young. She joined the Daughters of Bilitis, a lesbian organization, and wrote a letter to its publication arguing that sexism and anti-queer oppression sprang from the same source and that combating one required combating the other. In Hansberrys eyes, the victory showed that change came from below: Working-class people were central agents when it came to ameliorating black suffering. [6] The presiding minister, Eugene Callender, recited a message from Baldwin, and also a message from the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. that read: "Her creative ability and her profound grasp of the deep social issues confronting the world today will remain an inspiration to generations yet unborn." Lorraine Hansberry (May 19, 1930January 12, 1965) was a playwright, essayist, and civil rights activist. At Freedom, she worked with W. E. B. Hansberry and Nemiroff ended their romantic relationship after nine years, but he remained her best friend and closest confidant for the rest of her life. Hansberrys death in 1965, at the age of 34, curtailed her works more radical, materialist, and socialist analyses. [33][34] According to Kevin J. Mumford, however, beyond reading homophile magazines and corresponding with their creators, "no evidence has surfaced" to support claims that Hansberry was directly involved in the movement for gay and lesbian civil equality. Since 1619, Negroes have tried every method of communication, of transformation of their situation from petition to the vote, everything, she said. Hansberry died in 1965, at 34, of cancer. Hansberry married a white man, Robert Nemiroff. The lack of natural light in the apartment contributes to the sense of confinement, and the tiny amount of light that does manage to trickle into the apartment is a reminder both of the Youngers' dreams and of the deferment of those dreams. Carter, Steven. "[46], Hansberry wrote two screenplays of Raisin, both of which were rejected as controversial by Columbia Pictures. A Raisin in the Sunis often understood as the story of a black family fighting racist housing discrimination to purchase a home in a white neighborhood. The Combahee River Collectives identification with socialism was not surface-level or a departure from the norm but rather the result of a long history of black feminisms concern with poverty, labor, and oppressive forms of governance. The title of the play was taken from the poem "Harlem" by Langston Hughes: "What happens to a dream deferred? Sidney Poitier expressed interest in taking the part of the son, and soon a director and other actors (including Louis Gossett, Ruby Dee, and Ossie Davis) were committed to the performance. Lorraine Hansberry/Cause of death. 34 years (1930-1965) Lorraine Hansberry/Age at death. One of Lorraine Hanberry's brothers served in a segregated unit in World War II. Abrams is now one of the most prominent African American female politicians in the United States. During her short career Hansberry seemed destined to become an important force in American theater. In 1961, Hansberry was set to replace Vinnette Carroll as the director of the musical Kicks and Co, after its try-out at Chicago's McCormick Place. Shingles racked her body, and shed been diagnosed with cancer. Carter, "Commitment amid Complexity" (1980), p. 45. Nemiroff also put the finishing touches on some of Hansberrys incomplete plays, including The Drinking Gourd and What Use Are Flowers? But in doing so, audiences ignored how it was a uniquely black story about the ways the capitalist housing market limited black peoples liberties. As a young, Black woman, Hansberry was a groundbreaking artist, recognized for her strong, passionate voice on gender, class, and racial issues. [16], Additionally, she wrote scripts at Freedom. Date accessed. Amid the rabid anticommunism of the 1950s, she risked getting blacklisted by advocating for socialism, both at home and in the still decolonizing world, because she believed that freedom from racism also required global freedom from capitalism. Pancreatic cancer Lorraine Hansberry/Cause of death. She did not assume she knew all the answers, but she did want to see a less violent and more revolutionary world brought into existence. In time, Lorraine Hansberrys politics would resemble less her parents than their friends. She was anti-imperialist but also an American. At the 1963 Negro History Week program of the Liberation Committee for Africa, she gave a speech in which she insisted: Fair and equal treatment for Ralph Bunche, Jackie Robinson and Harry Belafonte is not nearly enough. Hansberry was an advocate for gay rights. Reading the work of the Irish dramatist Sean OCasey and then studying in Ajijic, Mexico, with the Guatemalan painter Carlos Mrida and others, she was introduced to an art that aimed at representing the global working class, those colonized people around the world who were being exploited in similar ways as black people in the United States. [38] Hansberry's atheist views were expressed within her dramas, particularly A Raisin in the Sun. [66] In the introduction of the live version, Simone explains the difficulty of losing a close friend and talented artist. In 1952, Hansberry began dating Robert Nemiroff, a Jewish graduate student at New York University, and married him the following year. [Originally published onApril 21, 2020via The Nation], [emailprotected] A screenplay soon followed, to which Lorraine Hansberry added more scenes to the storynone of which Columbia Pictures allowed into the film. Though there were violent protests, they did not move out until a court ordered them to do so. [23], Hansberry died of pancreatic cancer[5][60] on January 12, 1965, aged 34. Hansberry creates a stage that helps to illustrate this feeling of entrapment. Anderson, "Freedom Family" (2008), p. 265. She was the fourth child born to Nannie Perry Hansberry and Carl Augustus Hansberry in Chicago, IL. She was the . In 1956, Nemiroff co-wrote a hit song, Cindy, Oh Cindy. The profits allowed Hansberry to quit working at Freedom and devote her time exclusively to writing on her own. (2023, April 5). There she wrote about everything from Richard Wrights novelThe Outsider, which she disliked, to Kwame Nkrumahs election as prime minister of Ghana, which she applauded. Most importantly, Raisin brought African Americans to the theater as audiences and gave them representation on the stage. She was an African American. In 1938, her father bought a house in the Washington Park Subdivision of the South Side of Chicago, incurring the wrath of some of their white neighbors. [20] Hansberry traveled to Georgia to cover the case of Willie McGee, and was inspired to write the poem "Lynchsong" about his case. also chose death. Their new white neighbors did not welcome the move and a mob gathered around the house. [12] At the newspaper, she worked as a "subscription clerk, receptionist, typist, and editorial assistant"[15] besides writing news articles and editorials. "In an article titled 'Kenya's Kikuyu: A Peaceful People Wage Heroic Struggle against the British,' Hansberry presented an opposite view and applauded the Kikuyu for 'helping to set fire to British Imperialism in Kenya.' It was standing room only. She loved that he was less of a misogynist than most. American playwright. He later apologized for the attack. On May 22, 1967 Langston Hughes died after having had abdominal surgery. Initially called The Crystal Stair, she later retitled it A Raisin in the Sun, a phrase taken from Langston Hughess poem, Harlem: A Dream Deferred. Raisin drew upon the lives of working-class African Americans who rented houses from her father and who Hansberry went to school with on the South Side. Founded in 2004 and officially launched in 2006, The Hansberry Project of Seattle, Washington was created as an African-American theatre lab, led by African-American artists and was designed to provide the community with consistent access to the African-American artistic voice. In addition to fundraising, Hansberry continued to critique the inclusion of a privileged few black people (including herself) while excluding voices from the black working class. From left: Jack Manning/The . Lorraine Hansberry Elementary School was located in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans. Focused primarily on the black working-class struggle, she drew from. The documentary Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart is the first in-depth presentation of Hansberry's complex life, using her personal papers and archives, including home movies and . In 1973, a musical based on A Raisin in the Sun, entitled Raisin, opened on Broadway, with music by Judd Woldin, lyrics by Robert Brittan, and a book by Nemiroff and Charlotte Zaltzberg. Wilkins, "Beyond Bandung" (2006), p. 199. Someone threw a brick through the window, barely missing eight-year-old Hansberrys head. 8 Fascinating Facts About Lorraine Hansberry. In 1959, Lorraine Hansberry made history as the first African American woman to have a show produced on BroadwayA Raisin in the Sun. The case made it to the U.S. Supreme Court as Hansberry v. Lee, when their case was overturned, but on a technicality. Lorraine Hansberry ( 19 May 1930 - 12 January 1965) was an American playwright. Many audience members identified with the Youngers because they saw their conflict as quintessentially American: What could be more so than acquiring a home? Visitors to her childhood home included such Black luminaries as Duke Ellington, W.E.B. According to historian Fanon Che Wilkins, "Hansberry believed that gaining civil rights in the United States and obtaining independence in colonial Africa were two sides of the same coin that presented similar challenges for Africans on both sides of the Atlantic. By 1951, she was writing for Paul Robesons Freedom, a progressive publication that put her in touch with other literary and political mentors. The fact still feels intolerable, almost unassimilable her death not merely tragedy but a kind of theft. Lorraine Hansberry at an NAACP rally in New York City, 1959. The "primary feature" of the room is its atmosphere of having accommodated "the living of too many people for too many years.". In 1937, when she was 7, the family moved into a home in Washington Park, a white neighborhood, where angry white mobs gathered in the hopes of forcing them out. Suspecting he might one day need legal support, Carl Hansberry had already reached out to the NAACP to take the segregationists to court, which the organization proceeded to do. Commissioned by NBC in 1960 to create a television program about slavery, Hansberry wrote The Drinking Gourd. [41] It ran for 101 performances on Broadway[50] and closed the night she died. MAMA If you use the Lord's name just one more time. Hansberry et al. Though she was an internationalist, and something of a Black nationalist, a Marxist, and a socialist, she was also deeply American. Her critique of capitalist and racist America stemmed from a deep attachment to the culture and people who felt its violence. When prominent African American community members and leaders came through Chicago, they went to the Hansberrys home. The Sign closed the same day. Carl was an illustrious real-estate . The play follows a white couple with radical tendencies and artistic inclinations living in the countercultural enclave of New York Citys Greenwich Village. In this lesson, students will experience the tragedy of the commons through a team activity in which they compete for resources. AfterRaisins success made her a de facto spokesperson on African American politics, she openly criticized black leaders who neglected the poor to advance their own careers. Almost a year before Malcolm Xs by any means necessary speech, Hansberry insisted that black people had exhausted nearly every other means and still hadnt won substantive equality. Higashida, Cheryl, "To Be (come) Young, Gay, and Black: Lorraine Hansberry's Existentialist Routes to Anticolonialism", This page was last edited on 17 April 2023, at 06:26. As Hansberry interrogated her own position and those of other members of the black elite in the civil rights movement, she also began to question their commitment to nonviolence. Hansberry was the first Black playwright and the youngest American to win a New York Critics' Circle award. Later in the decade, she continued this project by writing queer fiction under the pseudonym Emily Jones. She was a daughter of the black elite, but she believed working people were the agents for change and was committed to seeing the violence against them end. Despite her marriage to a man, Hansberry identified as a lesbian but she was not out in the traditional sense, as homosexuality was illegal in New York City at the time. Langston Hughes was, in his later years, deemed the "Poet Laureate of the Negro Race," a title he encouraged. She died at 34 of pancreatic cancer. Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun. "No sooner had she joined Freedom, which had been founded by Paul Robeson as part of his tightening embrace of the Communist Party line in the increasingly frigid Cold War than she was serving as a participant-correspondent: she accompanied the 'Sojourners for Truth and Justice,' a group of 132 black women from 15 states which was convened in September 1951, in Washington by the long-time activist Mary Church Terrell 'to demand that the Federal Government protect the lives and liberties' of black Americans. Heavily damaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, it has since closed. They stayed married nearly to her death at 35 of pancreatic cancer. In October of 1964, three months after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, Lorraine Hansberrys playThe Sign in Sidney Brusteins Windowopened on Broadway. In 1937, Hansberrys parents challenged Chicagos restrictive housing covenants by moving into an all-white neighborhood. The Sign would be the second and final Hansberry play produced during her lifetime. Carter, "Commitment amid Complexity" (1980), p. 49. Their divorce wasn't finalized until years later, but they remained business partners and maintained a close relationship until her death. But she was unreserved about what she felt were their cultural and political flaws, too. Attended the University of Guadalajara 66 ] in the United States in 2013, Hansberry shied! Decade, she moved into a hotel next to the theater so shed be closer the. 700 mourners filled the Church she spent the summer of 1949 in Mexico, studying painting at the.! As a Black woman, activist, and shed been diagnosed with cancer the most prominent American! Inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame. [ 73 ] Hansberry seemed destined to become important. Hansberrys parents challenged Chicagos restrictive housing covenants by moving into an all-white neighborhood &! 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