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A Raisin in the Sunby Lorraine Hansberry
PPllaayy GGuuiiddee
Play Guide for
A Raisin in the Sun
TTaabbllee ooff CCoonntteennttss PPaaggee
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Synopsis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Characters in the Play . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Lorraine Hansberry by Peter Altman . . . 13
The Context of A Raisin in the SunThe Civil Rights Movement: A Chronology . . 17
Works of Lorraine Hansberry . . . . . . . . . 23
Lorraine Hansberry: In Her Own Words . . 24
Focus on Production: An Interview withLou Bellamy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
The Poetry of Langston Hughes. . . . . . . . 32
Critical Comments on Raisin . . . . . . . . . . 37
Vocabulary from the play . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Selected Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Editor/Writer: Peter Altman, Laura MuirContributing Writer: Elaine Scott
Design: Elaine ScottExecutive Editor: Peter Altman
Published January 2006
4
A Raisin in the SunIInnttrroodduuccttiioonn
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore –
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over –
Like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
Like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
—From “A Dream Deferred”by Langston Hughes
When A Raisin in the Sun
first appeared on stage
in 1959 it profoundly
changed American theatre, helping to
thrust a new African American
perspective into the American
mainstream. “Miss Hansberry forced
both blacks and whites to re-examine
the deferred dreams of black
America,” wrote Frank Rich of The
New York Times reevaluating the impact of Hansberry’s play at the time of its
25th anniversary. The attention attracted by her singular achievement opened the
LLoorrrraaiinnee HHaannssbbeerrrryy,, 11996644..
5
door for many other African American artists and helped to spark
the black theatre movement of the 1960s.
That same year, 1959, A Raisin in the Sun received the New
York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Play, beating Tennessee
Williams’ Sweet Bird of Youth, Eugene O’Neill’s A Touch of the
Poet, and JB by Archibald MacLeish. Hansberry was only 29 at the
time, and her selection was not widely supported. Many critics
thought that because she was young and black, the honor might
have been based on liberal bias. Today, however, A Raisin in the
Sun is widely acclaimed among critics and scholars as a great
American classic.
The play takes its title from a Langston Hughes poem which
speaks to the
anguish beneath
black America’s
pursuit of the
American dream.
When Lena
Younger, the family
matriarch, receives
a life insurance
settlement of
$10,000 after the
death of her husband, she and her family must decide how to use
her windfall. Lena’s son Walter Lee dreams of owning a liquor store
as a means of providing financial stability for the family. Lena,
however, wants to move the family out of the Chicago South Side
ghetto where they have long resided and she uses the money to buy
a house in an all-white neighborhood. When their future neighbors
resist the Youngers’ move, Walter Lee for the first time begins to
value what money can’t buy, and in the process he achieves a new
level of self respect and pride.
A Raisin in the Sun is based in part on an incident in the
childhood of the playwright. Determined to battle racial
discrimination in housing, Lorraine Hansberry’s father Carl, a well-
to-do Chicago banker and real estate investor, moved his family into
a house he purchased in a white neighborhood where they
withstood daily assaults by mobs who hurled bricks and bottles
“There is always something left tolove. And if you ain’t learned that,you ain’t learned nothing
–Lorraine Hansberry
6
through their windows. The Hansberry family was eventually evicted from their
home by the Illinois courts, but Carl Hansberry and the NAACP took the case to
the U.S. Supreme Court and won. Hansberry vs. Lee (1940) became a landmark
civil rights ruling banning racially restrictive covenants in housing contracts.
While working on her second play, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window,
Hansberry was diagnosed with cancer. She died in 1965 at the age of 34, leaving
behind an array of
unfinished work that
was led to publication
and performance by
her ex-husband and
literary executor,
Robert Nemiroff.
Before her death, she
had written the screen
play for the film version
of Raisin, which won first prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1961. Nemiroff
helped to complete What Use Are Flowers?, and, using excerpts from the
playwright’s letters, journals and plays, put together a dramatic autobiography
entitled To Be Young Gifted and Black, which had a highly successful Off-
Broadway run and has had many subsequent performances. Hansberry’s play Les
Blancs, set in Africa during a revolution, also has now become established and
honored as a major work.
A Raisin in the Sun has been translated into 30 languages and is the
preeminent achievement of a career cut tragically short. The play today is
acknowledged to be a masterpiece of American theatre and also an historic
breakthrough which presaged not only a revolution in black consciousness, but
one in women’s rights as well, as the play’s female characters respond in various
ways to the chauvinism and condescension of their husbands, brothers, suitors,
and society.
Kansas City Repertory Theatre’s current production of A Raisin in the Sun
–the first ever in the Rep’s 42-season history—comes at a time when the civil
rights era that was the backdrop for the play rings anew. Rosa Parks, the “mother
of the civil rights movement”, died on October 24, 2005, and one month later, the
Justice department completed its investigation into the 1955 murder of Emmett
Till. We now await word on whether or not that tragic case will be retried.
“The thing that makes you exceptional, if
you are at all, is inevitably that
which must also make you lonely.”
–Lorraine Hansberry
7
The lights come up on a run-down, cramped apartment on the South
Side of Chicago in the 1950s where three generations of the Younger
family live. It’s early morning and the household is slowly awakening.
The first person up is Ruth, who looks weary and unwell; her ten-year-old son
Travis, who sleeps on the couch in the family’s living room, is getting ready for
school and her husband Walter Lee enters from their bedroom. Ruth and Walter
Lee are soon in a familiar argument about his plans to open a liquor store using
his mother’s $10,000 insurance settlement which she acquired after from the
death of his father. The money is due to arrive in just a few days and he urges Ruth
to talk to his mother about his plans. Travis asks his mother for fifty cents for
school, but she says
she doesn’t have the
money, which sets up
the continuing
tension between
Ruth, who has pretty
much given up on
dreams, and the rest
of the family who
still cling to theirs.
Walter’s sister
Beneatha enters and Walter Lee is soon taunting her about wanting to become a
doctor; he secretly fears that their mother will use the $10,000 to pay for
Beneatha’s medical school expenses. Beneatha scolds Walter Lee saying, “That
money belongs to Mama and it’s for her to decide how she wants to use it.” Walter
Lee then accuses Beneatha of being ungrateful to family members who make it
possible for her to pursue her dream, at which point Beneatha falls on her knees
in a gesture of mock thanksgiving saying, “I do thank everybody…and forgive me
for ever wanting to be anything at all.”
A Raisin in the SunSSyynnooppssiiss
“Walter Lee say colored people ain’t
never going to start getting ahead
till they start gambling on some
different kinds of things in the
world–investments and things.”
–Lena Younger
8
As Walter Lee leaves for his job as a chauffer, his sixty-year-old mother
enters. Lena Younger is a formidable woman with hard-won wisdom.
Following Walter Lee’s urging, Ruth asks Mama how she plans to spend the life
insurance money. When Beneatha enters, the conversation shifts to her desire
to become a doctor and also to her lack of interest in eligible suitors. Beneatha
curses angrily and she is slapped by Mama. Stung by the reproach, Beneatha
gathers her books and leaves for school. Mama, preoccupied thinking about
her children and watering the scrawny plant she keeps on the window sill, only
gradually notices that Ruth has fainted.
In the next scene, the much anticipated insurance check is about to
arrive and the tension and anticipation in the household are building. Sure that
he can convince Mama to use the money to open a liquor store, Walter
telephones his business partner Willy Harris to inquire about their
arrangements, and then leaves. Ruth comes in from an early morning
appointment and announces to Mama and Beneatha that she is pregnant
and then collapses into a chair, distraught and unhappy. When the doorbell
rings, Mama guides Ruth to the bedroom to lie down.
Beneatha answers the door and Joseph Asagai, a young African man she
has met at college, enters with a large package. He is a well-traveled, educated
sophisticate from Nigeria who is smitten with Beneatha and is very supportive
of her desire to become a doctor. Asagai hands Beneatha the package from
which she pulls African records and an exotic Nigerian robe and headdress
which she holds up against her frame. Asagai lavishes approval on Beneatha
and she blooms under his gaze and acceptance. When Asagai leaves, Mama
comments to Beneatha, “Lord, that’s a pretty thing just went out of here.”
Travis enters, breaking Beneatha’s romantic spell with his teasing, and Mama
quickly sends him out on an errand.
The moment so keenly anticipated arrives when Travis enters with the
insurance check envelope which he has retrieved from the mail. Everyone
holds their breath as Lena stares at it with a face of growing unhappiness.
Tearing it open, she counts the zeroes saying, “Ten thousand dollars…put it
away somewhere, Ruth,” as if sensing the conflict brewing in her family.
Excusing Travis to play outside, Ruth and Mama talk about Ruth’s morning
appointment and Ruth confesses that she has visited a woman to discuss an
abortion. In the middle of their conversation, Walter enters, excitedly asking if
the check has arrived.
Mama is shocked by Ruth’s revelation of wanting to end her pregnancy
and urges Walter Lee to talk to his wife, but he will not be deterred from his
9
talking about the money and says angrily that he will talk to her later, yelling, “Will
somebody please listen to me today?” Infuriated by his outburst, Mama announces
that she will not give him money for his liquor store scheme, dashing Walter Lee’s
hopes. She is compelled to tell him that his wife is pregnant and considering an
abortion, but he doubts Ruth’s intentions and reuses to talk about the issue. Sadly,
Mama exclaims, “you are a disgrace to your father’s memory.”
Later that same day,
Mama’s stinging words to
Walter Lee are still hanging in
the air as the household goes
about its daily routine.
Beneatha enters from the
bedroom, dressed in her new
Nigerian clothes and promenades for a bemused Ruth, turning on the record
player to enjoy one of Asagai’s African records. An intoxicated Walter Lee enters
in the middle of Beneatha’s dance, and, making sarcastic comments, joins her in
dancing to the drum beats. Meanwhile, another of Beneatha’s suitors, George
Murchison, arrives for their date. He is unimpressed with Beneatha’s admiration
of her heritage. George, unlike Asagai, is an assimilationist and believes she should
accept modern realities and take her place as a black woman in a white society.
Attempts at a polite conversation between George and Walter Lee quickly
deteriorate and George is relieved when Beneatha returns and they hastily leave
the apartment to go to a show.
For once, Walter Lee and Ruth are alone in the apartment, but he still
refuses to discuss the baby, prompting her to decide to terminate the pregnancy.
Mama has been out for the day and when she returns Walter is suspicious of her
activities. He begs her tell him what she has done with the insurance money. She
replies by telling Travis, “Grandma went out and she bought you a house.”
Stunned to hear about the house and then to discover that it is in a white
neighborhood, Walter Lee says nothing as the women talk excitedly about moving
out of the old apartment. Mama pleads with Walter Lee to understand her actions,
but he bitterly says, “You the head of this family…you run our lives like you want
to…you butchered up a dream of mine–you–who always talking ‘bout your
children’s dreams.”
On a Friday night a few weeks later, the Younger household is in disorder
with packing crates everywhere. Beneatha and George have returned from an
evening out and he lectures her about life and questions her intellectual pursuits,
“Bitter? Man, I’m a volcano.”
–Walter Lee
10
adding that most men “just look at and want the packaging.” As
George continues talking, it becomes obvious that the relationship is
over and that when Beneatha says goodbye to him, it is for good.
Ruth learns that Walter Lee has not shown up at work for three
days. Admitting he doesn’t care and won’t be returning to his job, he
again tries to explain his dreams to Mama and Ruth, but to no avail.
As he leaves for his favorite bar, the Green Hat, Mama begins to
understand his frustrations and admits that she has been wrong. She
gives Walter the remaining sixty-five hundred dollars of the insurance
money and tells him to put three thousand dollars in savings for
Beneatha’s education and gives him control of the rest. “I’m telling you
to be the head of this family from now on like you supposed to be,”
says Mama. Dazed, looking at the money, Walter Lee grabs his coat
and hurries out the door
On Saturday one week later, excitement is in the air as the
Youngers are
preparing to move.
Even Walter Lee is
in good spirits. In
the midst of the
clowning and
reverie, Beneatha
opens the door to
an unassuming,
nervous middle-
aged white man,
Mr. Lindner. He
has come to
negotiate buying
the house in
Clybourn Park
from the Youngers in order to preserve the integrity of the white
neighborhood into which they hope to move. As the shock of Lindner’s
visit sinks in, his persistence to strike a deal sends Walter Lee into a
fury and he orders the man to leave. When Mama arrives the family
recounts Lindner’s visit but by then the event hardly makes an impact
on their excitement to leave their dingy apartment. As Mama picks up
her plant to prepare it for the move, Walter Lee and the family present
“...race prejudice simply doesn’t
enter into it...for the happiness
of all concerned...Negro families
are happier when they live in
their own communities.”
–Karl Lindner,
Clybourn Park
Neighborhood
Association
11
her with a special gift–a set of gardening tools to use at the new house.
In the middle of the moving excitement, Walter’s friend Bobo shows up
nearly in tears and tells Walter that Willy has absconded with their
investment money. Realizing the devastation of what’s happened,
Walter sinks into despair, confessing to Mama that he entrusted Willy
with all sixty-five hundred dollars, including Beneatha’s school money.
Mama beats her son with her Bible, praying aloud for strength to
survive this disaster.
Later that day, the family is feeling stunned by their turn of
fortune. Asagai comes to visit and tells Beneatha that he wishes to
marry her and take her with
him to Nigeria where she can
practice medicine. Confused,
but hopeful that there may be
a way to realize her dream,
Beneatha struggles with a
response and seeing this,
Asagai understands that she
must think his offer through
by herself and he leaves.
Mama is trying to be
cheerful as she begins to unpack, talking about ways the family can fix
up the apartment, when Walter enters, frantically looking for Mr.
Lindner’s business card. He now believes, over Mama’s objections, that
his only hope to restore the family’s money is to accept Lindner’s offer
of selling the house back to the neighborhood. When Mr. Lindner
arrives, Mama demands that Travis stay and observe “what our five
generations have come to.” But as the conversation with Lindner
proceeds, Walter undergoes a transformation. Suddenly expressing
pride of his family, Walter Lee acknowledges that he comes from a long
line of hard-working honest people and says that the family is going to
proceed with its plans to move into their new house. On his way out the
door, Lindner says with trepidation, “I hope you people know what
you’re in for.” Ruth breaks the stunned silence when she announces,
“Let’s get the hell out of here!”
One by one, the Youngers gather up the belongings they can
carry and walk out of the apartment, leaving Mama alone to take one
last look and then, cradling her fragile plant, she leaves the past behind.
“We have decided to
move into our house
because my father–my
father–he earned it. We
don’t want your money.”
–Walter Lee
12
Walter Lee Younger – Thirty-five-year old son of Lena Younger, the
husband of Ruth and father of Travis. Frustrated in his work as a chauffeur, he
dreams of one day owning his own business.
Ruth Younger – Walter Lee’s wife, about 30 years old. She bears the burden
of holding their family together, running its home, trying to make a decent life for
their son, and dealing with Walter Lee’s outbursts of anger and frustration.
Travis Younger – The son of Ruth and Walter Lee; about ten years old.
Beneatha Younger – Walter Lee’s younger sister. Beneatha is a college
student planning to go to medical school, an idealist who rebels against the
traditional values of society and her family.
Lena Younger (Mama) – Mother of Walter Lee and Beneatha. She and her
husband Walter Lee, Sr. moved to Chicago from the south to create a better life
for their children. She has lived her entire married life in the tiny apartment she
now shares with Beneatha, Walter Lee, Ruth and Travis. Now a widow, she is the
recipient of a $10,000 life insurance settlement following the death of her
husband, with which she wants to buy a home for herself and her family.
Joseph Asagai – College student from Nigeria who is a friend and suitor of
Beneatha’s. Asagai flames Beneatha’s interest in Africa, and hopes to take her
back there with him to live.
George Murchison – The son of a well-to-do Chicago family and also a
suitor of Beneatha’s. Her family encourages Beneatha to marry George because of
his family’s money, but Beneatha has a different vision for her life.
Karl Lindner – A representative of the Clybourn Park Neighborhood
Association, sent to discourage and pay off the Youngers to keep them from
moving into the home they have purchased there.
Bobo – Friend of Walter Lee’s and partner in a dubious scheme to buy a
liquor store.
A Raisin in the SunCChhaarraacctteerrss iinn tthhee PPllaayy
13
The first black woman playwright ever to have a play
produced on Broadway, Lorraine Hansberry was born in
Chicago on May 19, 1930. Her father, Carl Hansberry, Sr.,
was a prosperous real-estate developer and bank officer, a cultivated
man whose South Side home was a welcoming meeting place for
such prominent black figures as Langston Hughes, W.E.B. Du Bois,
Duke Ellington and Paul Robeson. Influenced by this
political and cultural environment, the future
playwright showed fervent interest in writing and art
as a student at Chicago’s Englewood High School.
After studying for two years at the University of
Wisconsin and for summers in Guadalajara, Mexico
and at Roosevelt University in Chicago, she moved to
New York City in 1950 hoping to become a journalist
and a painter.
Shortly after she moved to New York, Hansberry
became a reporter for Freedom magazine, a journal
published by Robeson. The niece of William Leo
Hansberry, a prominent African history scholar and
a Howard University professor, she was already
versed in the politics of African nationalism; as the
youngest member of Freedom’s staff, she wrote
articles about Egypt and Kenya as well as pieces
headlined “Child Labor is Society’s Crime Against
Youth” and “Negroes Cast in Same Old Roles in TV
Shows.” She also studied with the family friend Du
Bois, the “father of Pan-Africanism.” Within a year she was
promoted to Associate Editor of Freedom. In 1952 she traveled to
Montevideo, Uruguay to deliver a speech for Robeson at a peace
conference. Her passport was revoked as a result of this trip.
Lorraine HansberryBByy PPeetteerr AAllttmmaann
LLoorrrraaiinnee HHaannssbbeerrrryy
14
The same year that Hansberry began to work for
Freedom, she met Robert Nemiroff on a picket line at New
York University, where he attended graduate school. Two
years later they were married in Chicago. Nemiroff, then a
young songwriter and music publisher, collaborated closely
with the playwright and, following her death in 1965, became
her literary executor.
The earnings from Nemiroff’s 1956 hit song “Cindy, Oh
Cindy” enabled Hansberry to give up her job that year and to
turn her attention full-time to writing the play that became A
Raisin in the
Sun. Later
Hansberry
would write to
her mother
about the play:
“[it] will help a
lot of people
understand
that we have
among our
downtrodden
ranks people who are the very essence of human dignity.
That is what – after all the laughter and the tears – the play
is supposed to say.”
For A Raisin in the Sun Hansberry drew from an
incident in her own childhood that profoundly affected her
family’s life. In defiance of the “restrictive covenants” in real
estate contracts that confined many blacks to residential
ghettos in that era, Carl Hansberry, Sr. moved his family to
an all-white neighborhood. Mobs gathered outside the
Hansberrys’ new home, and eight-year-old Lorraine was
almost struck by a brick hurled through a window. The
family was finally evicted by Illinois authorities, but Carl
Hansberry and NAACP lawyers fought the state court
“My mother sent me to kindergarten in
white fur in the middle of the
Depression; the kids beat me up; and I
think it was from that moment I
became a rebel.”
–Lorraine Hansberry
15
decision all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, ultimately winning a
landmark decision prohibiting restrictive racial covenants
(Hansberry vs. Lee, 1940). Six years later, when his daughter
Lorraine was fifteen years old, Carl Hansberry, Sr. died of a cerebral
hemorrhage.
A Raisin in the Sun, according to The New York Times,
“changed American theatre forever.” With its Broadway opening in
1959, its twenty-nine-year-old author became the first black
playwright, the youngest American, and the fifth woman to win the
New York Drama Critics’ Best Play of the Year citation. James
Baldwin wrote of the play: “Never before in the history of the
American theatre had so much truth of black people’s lives been seen
on the stage.” A Raisin in the Sun has since gone on to become an
international dramatic classic, being published and produced in
some thirty languages and performed throughout the United States.
It has also been the source of a popular 1961 film version, with
screenplay by the playwright, which won a Cannes Film Festival
Award, and a successful, Tony Award-winning Broadway musical
entitled simply Raisin.
A Raisin in the Sun not only established Hansberry as a
successful playwright, it also propelled her into the role of significant
spokeswoman for and about black America. In an interview with
Studs Terkel, she declared that her play spoke not only for blacks but
for all people: “in order to create the universal, you must pay great
attention to the specific.” Her play, she asserted, is specifically about
the conflicts of a black Chicago family, but also about problems
which could face everybody.
Just five years after the Broadway opening of A Raisin in the
Sun, on January 12, 1965, the last night of the run of her second play
to be produced on Broadway, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s
Window, Lorraine Hansberry died of cancer. She was thirty-four
years old. Paul Robeson sang at her funeral, and Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr., who gave a eulogy, predicted that “her commitment of
spirit, her creative literary ability and her profound grasp of the deep
16
social issues confronting the world today will
remain an inspiration to generations yet
unborn.” Following her death, a variety of her
writings were published and performed for the
first time. The play Les Blancs, first produced in
1970, portraying a panorama of characters’
experience during an African revolution, has
become over the years widely admired as a
major achievement, and the dramatic collage
given the title To Be Young, Gifted, and Black,
which had its premiere Off-Broadway in 1969,
is now also established as an important theatre
piece.
Were she still alive this year, Lorraine
Hansberry would be 75 years old, the same age
currently being widely celebrated for theatre
icons Stephen Sondheim and Harold Pinter.
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17
The Context of AA RRaaiissiinn iinn tthhee SSuunnTThhee CCiivviill RRiigghhttss MMoovveemmeenntt:: AA CChhrroonnoollooggyy
1929 Martin Luther King, Jr. is born on January 15
in Atlanta.
1930 Lorraine Hansberry is born on May 19 in
Chicago. Her father is a successful realtor and an active
member of the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People (NAACP)
1939 NAACP Legal
Defense and Education Fund
is organized to fight against
bias.
1940 U.S. Supreme
Court rules in case of
Hansberry vs. Lee that
restrictive racial covenants in
real estate are illegal. The case
had been brought with support
of the NAACP legal team after
Carl Hansberry’s family had
moved in 1938 into a white
neighborhood and had been
evicted by Illinois authorities.
Despite the ruling, restrictive covenants continued to be
common for years afterward.
On July 25, Emmett Louis Till is born in Chicago and
grows up in the same neighborhood as Lorraine Hansberry.
Till’s death fifteen years later is a catalyst in the civil rights
movement.
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18
1947 When racial problems erupt at
Englewood High School, where Hansberry
is president of the debating society, she is
impressed by the way poorer blacks from
nearby Wendell Phillips High fight back
against administrators.
1951 Hansberry and a delegation of
women present the governor of Mississippi
with a petition with almost one million
signatures in support of Willie McGee who
is awaiting execution for an alleged rape.
Their attempt is unsuccessful and McGee is
executed.
1954 On May 17, the U.S. Supreme
Court rules on the landmark case Brown vs.
Board of Education of Topeka, unanimously agreeing that
segregation in public schools is unconstitutional, paving the way for
large-scale desegregation.
1955 On August 21, Emmett Till travels to Mississippi to visit
his uncle. One week later, he is
kidnapped after allegedly whistling
at a white woman and is murdered.
On September 6, the same day
Till is buried in Chicago, J.W.
Milam and Roy Bryant are indicted
for his murder; on September 23
they are acquitted by an all-white
jury. The two later confess to the
killing in a magazine interview.
On December 1 in
Montgomery, Alabama–one
hundred days after Till’s
murder–Rosa Parks is arrested
after refusing to give up her seat at
the front of the “colored section” of a bus to a white passenger. She
later commented that it was Till’s murder that helped her decide on
her actions.
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19
1957 Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus orders that nine black
students will not be allowed to enter Central High School in Little
Rock, violating federal law. The National
Guard is called to intervene.
Hansberry writes A Raisin in the Sun
and reads it to Philip Rose, a family
friend, who decides to produce the play.
He signs actor Sidney Poitier and director
Lloyd Richards.
1959 On March 11, A Raisin in the
Sun becomes the first play by a black
woman ever to be produced on Broadway.
It wins the New York Drama Critics Circle
Award as Best Play of the Year.
1960 Hansberry and other
dramatists are commissioned to write a
slavery drama for NBC to commemorate the centenery of the U.S.
Civil War . Her segment, The Drinking Gourd, is considered too
controversial and the entire series is dropped.
A series of student sit-ins throughout
the south is successful in integrating
parks, swimming pools, libraries,
theatres, and other public facilities.
1961 James Meredith becomes the
first black student to enroll at the
University of Mississippi. White groups
try to block his attendance at the
university and violence erupts causing
President Kennedy to send in 5,000
federal troops.
The film version of A Raisin in the
Sun is released; it is nominated for Best
Screenplay of the Year by the Screen
Writers Guild, and wins a special award at
the Cannes Film Festival.
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20
1962 Hansberry continues her work for
the Student Non-violent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC) in its battle against
Southern segregation and speaks out against
the House Un-American Activities Committee
and about the Cuban missile crisis.
1963 Martin Luther King is arrested
and jailed during an anti-segregation protest
in Birmingham, Alabama.
Televised and published images of police
dogs and fire hoses being turned on non-
violent black demonstrators in Birmingham
gain worldwide sympathy for the American
civil rights movement.
More than 200,000 people join the
March on Washington on August 28 where
Martin Luther King delivers his famous “I
Have a Dream” speech.
In Birmingham, four
young girls attending
Sunday school are killed
on September 15 when a
bomb explodes at the
Sixteenth Street Baptist
Church.
President John F.
Kennedy is assassinated
in Dallas on November
22 by Lee Harvey
Oswald. Lyndon Baines
Johnson is sworn in as
President.
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21
1964 On July 2, President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act
of 1964 prohibiting discrimination based on race, color, religion, or
national origin.
In August, the bodies are found of three civil rights workers—
two black, one white—who had been working in Mississippi to
register black voters. They had
been arrested by police on
speeding charges, jailed and then
released to members of the Ku
Klux Klan, who murdered them.
1965 Lorraine Hansberry
dies of cancer on January 12; she
is thirty-four. Dr. King delivers a
eulogy at her funeral.
On February 21, Malcolm X,
founder of the Organization of
Afro-American Unity, is shot to
death.
On August 10, Congress passes the Voting
Rights Act of 1965, banning the use of literacy
tests and other requirements commonly
employed to restrict black voting.
1968 On April 4, Martin Luther King, Jr.
is murdered in Memphis. Violence erupts in
100 cities.
1971 On April 20, the Supreme Court
upholds busing as a legitimate means for
achieving integration of public schools. Court
ordered busing will continue until the late
1990s in such cities as Charlotte, Boston,
Denver, and Kansas City.
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22
2004 In May, the U.S. Justice
Department reopens the Emmett Till
case.
2005 Rosa Lee Parks dies on
October 24 at the age of 92. She is
called the “mother of the modern day
Civil Rights Movement” by the U.S.
Congress. Her body is laid in honor in
the U.S. Capitol Rotunda.
In November, upon completion of
its investigation into the Till case, the
F.B.I. gives its report to the District
Attorney of Greenville, Mississippi on
whether there is enough evidence to
retry the case. At the time of this
printing, no decision has been
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23
Works of Lorraine Hansberry
Plays
A Raisin in the Sun, 1959
The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, 1965
To Be Young, Gifted and Black
(adapted by Robert Nemiroff from the plays,
letters and stories of Lorraine Hansberry), 1969
Les Blancs, 1970
The Drinking Gourd, 1972
What Use Are Flowers?, 1972
Other works
The Movement (a photo history of the
Civil Rights struggle, retitled A Matter of
Colour), 1964
24
Lorraine HansberryIInn HHeerr OOwwnn WWoorrddss
Years after the opening night of A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine
Hansberry wrote the following:
“…I had turned the last page out of the typewriter and pressed all the sheets
neatly together in a pile, and gone and stretched out face down on the living room
floor. I had finished a play; a play I had no reason to think or not think would ever
be done; a play that I was sure no one would quite understand…”
“I could no more imagine myself allowing the Youngers to accept [Mr.
Lindner’s] obscene offer of money than I could imagine myself allowing them to
accept a cash payment for their own murder. You see, our people don’t really have
a choice. We must come out of the ghettos of America, because the ghettos are
killing us, not only our dreams, as Mama says, but our very bodies. It is not an
abstraction to us that the average American Negro has a life expectancy of five to
ten years less than the average white.”
From a speech made at a Negro Writers’ Conference:
“I was born on the South Side of Chicago. I was born black and a female. I
was born in a depression after one world war, and came into my adolescence
during another. While I was still in my teens the first atom bombs were dropped
on human beings at Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and by the time I was twenty-three
years old my government and that of the Soviet Union had entered actively into
the worst conflict of nerves in human history–the Cold War.
I have lost friends through cancer, lynching and war. I have been personally
the victim of physical attack, which was the offspring of racial and political
25
hysteria. I have worked with the handicapped and seen the ravages
of congenital diseases that we have not yet conquered…I have like all
of you on occasions seen indescribable displays of man’s very real
inhumanity to man, and I have come to maturity as we all must,
knowing that greed and malice, indifference to human misery and
perhaps above all else, ignorance–the prime ancient and persistent
enemy of man–abound in this world…One cannot live with sighted
eyes and feeling heart and not know and react to the miseries which
afflict this world.”
Excerpt from a 1960 letter to Mr. Chuchvalec of the
State Theatre in Ostrava, Czechoslovakia:
“…I am the first to say that ours is a complex and difficult
country and some of our complexities are indeed grotesque. We who
are Negro Americans can offer that last remark with unwavering
insistence. It is, on the other hand, also a great nation with certain
beautiful and indestructible traditions and potentials, which can be
seized by all of us who possess imagination and love of man. There
is, as a certain play suggests, a great deal to be fought in America–
but, at the same time, there is so much which begs to be but re-
affirmed and cherished with sweet defiance. Vulgarity, blind
conformity and mass lethargy need not triumph in the land of
Lincoln and Frederick Douglass and Walt Whitman and Mark
Twain. There is simply no reason why dreams should dry up like
raisins or prunes or anything else in America. If you will permit me
to say so, I believe that we can impose beauty on our future…”
January 19, 1959 in a letter to her mother:
“Mama, it is a play that tells the truth about people, Negroes and
life and I think it will help a lot of people to understand how we are
just as complicated as they are–and just as mixed up–but above all,
26
that we have among our miserable and downtrodden
ranks–people who are the very essence of human dignity.
That is what, after all the laughter and tears, the play is
supposed to say. I hope it will make you very proud.”
From a speech made at a Negro Writers’
Conference:
“I must share with you part of a conversation I had with
a young New York intellectual in my living room in
Greenwich Village. “Why,” he said to me, “are you so sure
the human race should go on? You do not believe in a prior
arrangement of life on this planet. You know perfectly well
that the reason for survival does not exist in nature!” I
answered him the only way I could. “Man is unique in the
universe–the only creature who has in fact the power to
transform the universe. Therefore, it does not seem
unthinkable to me that man might just do what the apes
never will–impose the reason for life on life. I wish to live
because life has within it that which is good, that which is
beautiful and that which is love…Since I have known all of
these things, I have found them to be reason enough…to
live, moreover, for others to live for generations and
generations and generations…”
On writing:
“Since I was a child, I have been possessed of the desire
to put down the stuff of my life…There is only one internal
quarrel: how much truth to tell...It is brutal, in sober,
uncompromising moments, to reflect on the comedy of
concern we all enact when it comes to our precious images!”
27
On theatre:
“I’m particularly attracted to a medium where not only do you get to
do what we do in life everyday—talk to people–but to be very selective
about the nature of the conversation. [Playwriting is] an opportunity to
treat characters in the most absolute relief, one against the other, so that
everything, sympathy and conflict, can be played sharply. I suppose [what]
makes that appeal to me [is my own private] desire to talk to people, and
I suppose to also make them do what I want them to do.”
On commitment:
“Comfort has come to be its own corruption. I think of lying without a
painkiller in pain. In all the young years no such image ever occurred to
me. I rather looked forward to going to jail once. Now I can hardly imagine
surviving it at all. Comfort. Apparently I have sold my soul for it. I think
when I get my health back I shall go into the South to find out what kind
of revolutionary I am…”
On being young, gifted and black:
“Despair? Did someone say despair was a question in the world? Well
then, listen to the sons of those who have known little else if you wish to
know the resiliency of this thing you would so quickly resign to mythhood,
this thing called the human spirit.”
On Sean O’Casey and the qualities of good drama:
“I love Sean O’Casey. This, to me, is the playwright of the twentieth
century accepting and using the most obvious instruments of Shakespeare,
which is the human personality in its totality. O’Casey never fools you
about the Irish, you see…the Irish drunkard, the Irish braggart, the Irish
liar…and the genuine heroism which must naturally emerge when you tell
28
the truth about people. This, to me, is the height of artistic perception and is
the most rewarding kind of thing that can happen in drama, because when
you believe people so completely–because everybody has their drunkards
and their braggarts and their cowards, you know–then you also believe them
in their moments of heroic assertion, you don’t doubt them.”
Remarks about kindergarten:
“My mother sent me to kindergarten in white fur in the middle of the
Depression; the kids beat me up; and I think it was from that moment I
became a rebel…”
On being a woman:
“A woman who is willing to be herself and pursue her own potential runs
not so much the risk of loneliness as the challenge of exposure to more
interesting men—and people in general.”
On talent:
“The thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that
which must also make you lonely. Never be afraid to sit awhile and think.”
On life:
“There is always something left to love. And if you haven’t learned that,
you ain’t learned nothing.”
29
Focus on ProductionAAnn IInntteerrvviieeww wwiitthh LLoouu BBeellllaammyy
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—and then run?
— excerpt from “A Dream Deferred”
by Langston Hughes
Many believe that Langston Hughes’ 1951 poem
“Dream Deferred” was the inspiration for the title
of A Raisin in the Sun and that the themes of the poem and
the play go hand in hand.
It is always difficult to be caught in a polemic like the chicken or
the egg. I don’t know if Hansberry read the poem first and then
created the drama, or if she created a piece and then found a title
that had poetic and practical experience. However, the historical,
cultural, and emotional power that is forged by linking the two is
worthwhile. Whether lost potential and frustration will erupt into
violence or can be channeled in a positive manner to make ourselves
Lou Bellamy continues his work with Kansas City
Rep having directed the Rep’s critically acclaimed
Two Trains Running. He is the founder and
artistic director of Saint Paul’s Penumbra Theatre, one of
America’s premier theatres dedicated to exploration of the
African American experience. The following interview was
conducted by Laura Muir, Kansas City Repertory Theatre’s
director of communications.
DDiirreeccttoorr LLoouu BBeellllaammyy
30
and our world better is the central question in both the play and in
the poem. It’s impossible now to separate the two artistic
statements. Both Hughes and Hansberry sought to comment on the
African American experience in ways that were complex, truthful,
and enlightening. Both achieved these ends several times in their
careers.
When A Raisin in the Sun opened in 1959, Hansberry
was the first black woman to have a play produced on
Broadway. Do you believe that the play still speaks with
relevancy to the African American experience?
When one experiences this play today, one is struck by its
uncanny relevance with regard to current issues and that now, fifty
years later, many of the same issues still plague American cities. It
is as though the civil rights movement opened the door for those who
were prepared to walk through (i.e., those who had the appropriate
preparation—socially, economically, educationally). The vast
majority of African Americans remain outside of the mainstream. A
drive down Troost Avenue is most instructive.
Not only were great opportunities not realized by the promise of
integration, the African American institutions that previously kept
its society healthy were lost. The result seems to be that the larger
society has left people of color hanging out to dry and since their
societal institutions have been abandoned, they have nowhere to
turn for succor. Hurricane Katrina exposed the utter destitution that
is the rule, rather than the exception for too many Americans. In Ms.
Hansberry’s play, the family moves away. We have no prescription
as to what will happen to them. They are leaving their community for
the promise of the future. Has it been realized?
31
Beyond the universal themes presented in Raisin– the importance
of dreams, strength of family, belief in good over evil– Hansberry’s
story also reflects the profound bravery of the Younger family.
Where do think they acquired their incredible strength of character?
The effort to find epic proportion and significance in the lives of everyday
people has been integral to the African American literary tradition since the slave
narratives. To the uninformed observer, these stories may take on a melodramatic
tinge, but many accurately reflect the condition of the vast majority of African
Americans. Constant attention and reaction to racism has measurable physical,
emotional, and economic ramifications that exact a terrible toll on those who
grapple with it every minute of every day. The struggle seems to take on an almost
mythical manifestation.
What are some of the challenges of directing Raisin?
Raisin is taught in most public schools, colleges and universities and there
have been two significant motion pictures. It is, in fact, an important part of the
Western cultural and dramatic framework. The challenge is to raise the
emotional stakes without allowing the audience to get ahead of the play.
Audiences are familiar with the story and will often have their favorite scenes or
passages. This kind of familiarity with the play makes exposition difficult to
handle and challenges the dramatic team to unfold the plot in a compelling, yet
recognizable manner.
32
The Poetry of Langston Hughes
From the time she was a young girl, Lorraine
Hansberry was deeply influenced by the poetry of
Langston Hughes, a poet, playwright and novelist
of the Harlem Renaissance who was a friend of her father. It
was Hughes’ poem, “A Dream Deferred” from his Harlem
collection that provided the title to Hansberry’s play A
Raisin in the Sun.
James Langston Hughes (1902-1967) was born in
Joplin, Missouri and graduated from Lincoln
University in Pennsylvania. While working as a
bus boy in a Washington, D.C. hotel in 1925,
Hughes was “discovered” by poet Vachel
Lindsay. Within a year he won recognition with
his first poetry collection, Weary Blues (1926).
He went on to become a major figure in the
Harlem Renaissance, and to pioneer black
realism in novels, stories, poetry, songs,
speeches and children’s books. In 1936 and
1937, he worked in Spain as Madrid
correspondent for The Baltimore Afro-
American. In his work, he often wrote about
city life and the experiences of urban blacks. He
treated race issues with insight and
sophistication, wit and anger. His books of verse
also include The Dream Keeper (1932),
Shakespeare in Harlem (1942) and Freedom’s
Plow (1943). Other works include the novel Not
Without Laughter (1930), and the short story collections Laughing
to Keep from Crying and The Ways of White Folks (1930).
LLaannggssttoonn HHuugghheess11990022--11996677
33
Me and the Mule
My old mule,
He’s got a grin on his face.
He’s been a mule so long
He’s forgot about his race.
I’m like that old mule–
Black–and don’t give a damn!
You got to take me
Like I am.
Stars
O, sweep of stars over Harlem streets,
O, little breath of oblivion that is night.
A city building
To a mother’s song.
A city dreaming
To a lullaby.
Reach up your hand, dark boy, and take a star.
Out of the little breath of oblivion
That is night,
Take just
One star.
34
Note on Commercial Theatre
You’ve taken my blues and gone–
You sing ‘em on Broadway
And you sing ‘em in Hollywood Bowl
And you mixed ‘em up with symphonies
And you fixed ‘em
So they don’t sound like me.
Yep, you done taken my blues and gone.
You also took my spirituals and gone.
You put me in Macbeth and Carmen Jones
And all kinds of Swing Mikados
And in everything but what’s about me–
But someday somebody’ll
Stand up and talk about me,
And write about me–
Black and beautiful
And sing about me,
And put on plays about me!
I reckon it’ll be
Me myself!
Yes, it’ll be me.
35
(Hansberry’s first working title for A Raisin
in the Sun was “The Crystal Stair,” based on this
Langston Hughes poem.)
Mother to Son
Well, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor–
Bare.
But all the time I’se been a climbin’ on.
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps
‘Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now–
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
36
IIddrreeaamm aa wwoorrlldd wwhheerree mmaann
NNoo ootthheerr mmaann wwiillll ssccoorrnn;;
WWhheerree lloovvee wwiillll bblleessss tthhee eeaarrtthh
AAnndd PPeeaaccee iittss ppaatthh aaddoorrnn..
II ddrreeaamm aa wwoorrlldd wwhheerree aallll
WWiillll kknnooww sswweeeett FFrreeeeddoomm’’ss wwaayy;;
WWhheerree ggrreeeedd nnoo lloonnggeerr ssaappss tthhee ssoouull,,
NNoorr aavvaarriiccee bblliigghhttss oouurr ddaayy––
AA wwoorrlldd II ddrreeaamm wwhheerree bbllaacckk oorr wwhhiittee,,
WWhhaatteevveerr rraaccee yyoouu bbee,,
WWiillll sshhaarree tthhee bboouunnttiieess ooff tthhee eeaarrtthh
AAnndd eevveerryy mmaann iiss ffrreeee;;
WWhheerree wwrreettcchheeddnneessss wwiillll hhaanngg iittss hheeaadd
AAnndd jjooyy,, lliikkee aa ppeeaarrll,,
AAtttteenndd tthhee nneeeeddss ooff aallll mmaannkkiinndd––
OOff ssuucchh II ddrreeaamm,, mmyy wwoorrlldd!!
I Dream A World
I dream a world where man
No other man will scorn
Where love will bless the earth
And Peace its path adorn.
I dream a world where all
Will know sweet Freedom’s way;
Where greed no longer saps the soul,
Nor avarice blights our day–
A world I dream where black or white
Whatever race you be,
Will share the bounties of the earth
And every man is free;
Where wretchedness
will hang its head
And joy, like a pearl,
Attend the needs of all mankind–
Of such I dream, my world.
37
Critical Comments on Raisin
“Of the four chief characters in the play, Walter Lee is the most
complicated and the most impressive. He is often unlikable,
occasionally cruel…The play is concerned primarily with his
recognition that, as a man, he must begin from, not discard, himself
–that dignity is a quality of men, not bank accounts…Walter Lee’s
difficulty…is that he has accepted the American myth of success at
its face value, that he is trapped, as Willy Loman was trapped, by a
false dream.”
—Gerald Weales, “Thoughts on A Raisin in the Sun” in
Commentary, June, 1959
“Miss Hansberry…completes a circle begun by [Langston]
Hughes. In a new and much more realistic setting, she too has had a
vision of a romantic reunion between Negro American and black
African. But her vision is shaped by new times, new outlooks. It is no
longer a wispy literary yearning after a lost primitivism, nor does she
beat it out on synthetic tomtoms. Nor is it any longer a matter of
going back to Africa as the ultimate option of despair in America. In
Lorraine Hansberry’s time it has become a matter of choice between
new freedoms now in the grasp of black men, both African and
American.”
—Harold R. Isaacs, “Five Writers and their African Ancestors,
Part II” (Originally a lecture given at the University of
Pennsylvania in June 1960.)
38
“One of the biggest selling points about [A Raisin in the Sun]…was how much
the Younger family was just like any other American family. Some people were
ecstatic to find that “it didn’t really have to be about Negroes at all!” It was, rather,
a walking, talking, living demonstration of our mythic conviction that,
underneath, all of us Americans are pretty much alike…This uncritical
assumption, sentimentally held by the audience, powerfully fixed in the character
of the powerful mother with whom everybody could identify…made other
questions about the Youngers…irrelevant…Everybody who walked into the
theatre saw in Lena Younger…his own great American Mama.
The play was about Walter Lee and what happens to him as a result of having
his dream…endlessly frustrated by poverty and its attendant social and personal
degradation. Walter Lee’s dream of “being somebody”–of “making it” like
everybody else was not respectable to mama, but…it was Walter Lee’s dream, and
it was all he had. …That made it a matter of life and death to him, revolutionary,
dangerous in its implications...for it could explode if frustrated. It could destroy
people, it could kill...That’s what Lorraine was warning us about.”
—Actor Ossie Davis, “The Significance of Lorraine Hansberry” in
Freedomways, Summer, 1965
“…This strength we [African-American women] celebrate has sometimes
crippled black men, as does Mama Lena in A Raisin in the Sun. Though her virtue
may be its own reward, there are nonetheless direct consequences for the
husbands and children. Critics have debated for years whether or not Mama Lena
actually changes at the end of A Raisin in the Sun and turns the reins of control
over to her son Walter Lee. The banter in the final scene, however, shows that she
is still playfully ordering her family around…and what that presages for the future
is unclear, as her strong physical and moral presence continues to loom large.”
–Trudier Harris, “This Disease Called Strength: Some Observations on
the Compensating Construction of Black Female Character”
39
“Like all plays, [A Raisin in the Sun] is about love and death and deep
personal struggle. Suffering! There’s only one subject in the theatre and that’s
suffering, there isn’t another one. It’s a fantastically beautifully written story
about a particular kind of suffering and the survival of suffering. Like all good and
exciting stories, you never know until the last moment whether the key characters
are going to get what they want.”
–Director David Lan from an interview by staff of the Young Vic Theatre
Company
“Raisin lives because…Hansberry has done more than document, which is the
most limited form of realism. She is a critical realist, in the way that Langston
Hughes, Richard Wright and Margaret Walker are. She analyzes and assesses
reality, and her statement cannot be separated from the characters she creates.”
–Robert Neimroff, literary executor and ex-husband of Lorraine Hansberry
“I think the thing that Lorraine Hansberry does brilliantly in the script is
explore the four different generations in the family. There is mother’s generation
for whom life was about not being lynched and being able to make it to the north.
Then there’s Walter’s generation that is post WWII of [hard-fighting] men coming
home, talking about who they are going to be in America. For Walter it’s about
being a man in his own right, not a man who has to settle for anything, but a man
who can define himself. The next generation is Beneatha’s–a fifteen year gap from
Walter’s. She will go to University and be educated in non-segregated
universities…because she will be the first generation to have the right to benefit
from [the battles] of Walter’s generation. The final generation is Travis who will
inherit the wind if everyone gets what they want. Things that his grandmother and
his father and his aunt fought for he will take as a matter of course. His war will
be something completely different.”
–Actor Lennie James
40
“If we ever reach a time when the racial madness that afflicts
America is at last truly behind us–as obviously we must if we are to
survive in a world composed four-fifths of people of color–then I
believe A Raisin in the Sun will remain no less pertinent. For at the
deepest level it is not a specific situation, but the human condition,
human aspiration, and human relationships–the persistence of
dreams, of the bonds and conflicts between men and women,
parents and children, old ways and new, and the endless struggle
against human oppression, whatever the forms it may take, and for
individual fulfillment, recognition, and liberation—that are at the
heart of such plays. It is not surprising therefore that in each
generation we recognize ourselves in them anew.”
—Robert Nemiroff
41
Vocabulary from the Play
Ashanti Empires – a dynasty that prevailed in Western Africa, near
present day Ghana (known in colonial times as the Gold Coast), from about
300 A.D. to 1200 A.D. Many of the slaves who were brought to America came
from the Gold Coast.
Assimilationism – a term used to denote the belief in the incorporation
of one group into another. Specifically, in the case of Raisin, Beneatha uses it
to mean black people who deny their own cultural heritage to fit into the
prevailing white society.
Bantu – an African people native to the equatorial and southern regions
of the continent. Beneatha remarks about poetry in Bantu.
Buckingham Palace – The London residence of the royal family of
Great Britain.
Civil – a minimum level of courtesy and politeness.
Clybourn Park – a fictional neighborhood in Chicago, where Lena
Younger buys a home.
Colonel McCormick – owner of the Chicago Tribune in the 1950s.
Colonialism – control by one power over a dependent area or people; a
policy based on such control. Beneatha refers to colonialism in Africa, where
for more than 300 years the native people were controlled by colonial
governments in Europe.
Cracker – a slang term meaning “white person.”
Ethiopia – a nation in eastern Africa bordering on the Red Sea, site of an
ancient civilization. The earliest evidence of ancient mankind has been found
in Ethiopia.
“Garbo Routine” – silence and reserve. Refers to the film star Greta
Garbo, the most admired screen actress of the 1920s who, after retiring young,
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refused to be interviewed or appear in public, and lived a secretive and secluded life
until her death.
Ghetto – a city neighborhood notable for poor conditions and overcrowding,
where a minority group is forced to live because of social, legal or economic pressure.
Heathenism – an uncivilized, irreligious manner of living.
Ku Klux Klan – a post-Civil War secret society advocating white supremecy. It
has evolved into a secret fraternal group held to confine its membership to American-
born white Christians.
Liberia – an African nation founded in 1822 by the American Colonization
Society as a place to send free blacks from the United States. Comes from the root word
meaning “liberty.”
Monsieur Le Petit-Bourgeois (French) – “Mr. Middle Class.” Beneatha uses
the phrase to make fun of Walter Lee’s desire to raise himself up as part of the middle
class power structure by owning his own business.
NAACP – National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, an
association dedicated to ending racial discrimination in America. The NAACP was
founded in New York City in 1909 with a merging of the Niagara movement of black
scholar and social leader W.E.B. Du Bois and a group of concerned whites. The NAACP
is still one of the largest and most influential antidiscrimination/racial equality
organizations in the U.S. today. In 1982, it had a membership of more than 500,000
people.
Napoleon (1769-1821) – French military hero and emperor. One of the greatest
military leaders of all time, he led the French army to a successful conquest of most of
Europe in the early 19th century, but was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 and
was exiled to the British island of St. Helena.
Nigeria – the most populous nation in Africa and home to many tribal dynasties
of the Yoruba, the Songhay, and the Benin. The British established Nigeria as a colonial
protectorate in 1906. Nigeria gained its independence from Britain in 1960.
Prometheus – a Greek mythological figure who was a Titan (precursors to the
Greek gods). Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to man. He also taught
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mankind many arts and sciences. In retaliation, Zeus, king of the gods, chained
Prometheus to a mountain where an eagle each day ate out his liver. Each night the
liver would grow back, to be eaten again at daylight.
Queen of the Nile – name for Cleopatra, queen of Egypt. Used to refer to
Beneatha’s wrapping herself in the Nigerian robes given her by Asagai, and to her
acting like a regal African queen.
Sharecropper – a tenant farmer who farms land owned by another, often
with tools and seed provided by the landlord, and in exchange receives a portion of
the resulting harvest. In the southern United States, this system was abused as a
means of keeping blacks economically dependent.
Songhay Civilization – the Songhay empire was the largest ancient empire
of West Africa, in the region that is now Mali. It was founded around 700 A.D.,
became Muslim in 1000 A.D. and ended in 1700 A.D.
South Side – a neighborhood in Chicago that is largely poor and mainly
African American.
The Man/Captain Boss/Mistuh Charley/Mr. Bossman – slang terms
used by African Americans for a white man, originally an overseer or boss.
Titan – any of the early deities of Greek mythology, the progenitors of the
Greek gods. The titans were the children of Uranus and Gaea (heaven and earth).
Uncle Tom – from the character in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle
Tom’s Cabin. It became a denigrating slang term used to describe African
Americans.
Washington, Booker T. – black American educator (1856-1915), born a
mulatto slave, and founded the Tuskegee Institute, a school for blacks at Tuskegee,
Alabama. It became one of the leading black educational institutions in America
aimed at providing a means of economic independence. Washington was an active
orator, but drew opposition from other black leaders including W.E.B. Du Bois for
maintaining that it was pointless for blacks to demand social equality before
attaining economic independence through education.
Yoruba – a tribe native to the African country of Nigeria.
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Bibliography
Carter, Steven R. Hansberry’s Drama: Commitment Amid
Complexity. University of Illinois Press. 1991.
Cruse, Harold. The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual. New York
Review Books. New York, 1967.
Hansberry, Lorraine. The Movement: Documentary of a
Struggle for Equality. Simon and Schuster, 1964.
Huntington Theatre Company. A Raisin in the Sun Play
Guide. Boston, 1995.
Scheader, Catherine. Lorraine Hansberry: Playwright and
Voice of Justice. 1998.
Scott, Mark. “Langston Hughes of Kansas,” Excerpt from
Kansas History, Spring, 1980, Kansas State Historical Society
at www.kshs.org/publicat/history/1980spring_scott.htm.
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Peter Altman, Producing Artistic Director4949 Cherry Street • Kansas City, MO 64110
A Raisin in the Sun is sponsored by:
Partial support for this production is provided by
For information about the Sprint Student Matinee Series,please call 816-235-2707.
The 2005-06 season is supported in part by Muriel McBrien Kauffman Foundation,Hallmark Corporate Foundation, the Hall Family Foundation, and the University ofMissouri-Kansas City.
Now in its 42nd season, Kansas City Repertory Theatre is the professional theatre inresidence at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. The Rep produces up to sevenmainstage plays each season, employs more than 250 professional artists, techniciansand administrators, and serves approximately 100,000 patrons annually. As the region’sonly professional theatre with membership in the national League of Resident Theatres,the Rep operates under agreements with Actors’ Equity Association (the national unionof professional actors and stage mangers), the Society of Stage Directors andChoreographers, Inc., and United Scenic Artists Local USA-829 IATSE.