Lorraine was graceful, poised, and elegant (journalists and critics always also seemed to mention her petite frame or collegiate style), but could be icy and confrontational when the situation demandedand sometimes it was demanded. Although the couple separated in 1957 and divorced in 1962, their professional relationship lasted until Hansberry's death. Lorraine Vivian Hansberry was born in Chicago on May 19, 1930, the youngest of four children born to Carl Augustus Hansberry, a prominent real estate broker, and his wife, Nannie Louise Hansberry, a schoolteacher and ward committeewoman. Lorraine Hansberry, (born May 19, 1930, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.died January 12, 1965, New York, New York), American playwright whose A Raisin in the Sun (1959) was the first drama by an African American woman to be produced on Broadway. Even though her disease brought her career to an abrupt halt, Lorraine Hansberry continues to be remembered through the paintings and writings which she worked on in the early years of her career. Along these lines, she wrote a critical review of Richard Wright's The Outsider and went on to style her final play Les Blancs as a foil to Jean Genet's absurdist Les Ngres. Lorraine Hansberry was born on May 19, 1930 at Provident Hospital on the South Side of Chicago. How could we improve it? Her promising career was cut short by her early death frompancreatic cancer. Hansberrys work broke barriers and paved the way for more diverse voices to be heard on the Broadway stage. Lorraine's father, Carl Augustus Hansberry, was a real-estate speculator and a proud race man. W.E.B. Hansberry and Simone had been friends and shared a bond over their interests in social justice and radical politics. In the same year, Hansberry was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer which took her life at a mere age of 34. In addition to her activism around civil rights, Hansberry was also a feminist and an advocate for womens rights. . She left behind an unfinished novel and several other plays, including The Drinking Gourd and What Use Are Flowers?, with a range of content, from slavery to a post-apocalyptic future. It was with those friends and Nemiroff that she kept a secret about the pancreatic cancer that would eventually take her life on January 12, 1965, at age 34. In 1961, the play was made into a movie. When Irvine read the lyrics after it was finished, he thought, "I didn't write this. James Baldwin wrote the introduction to Hansberrys biography, To Be Young, Gifted, and Black with an endearing letter to Hansberry titled Sweet Lorraine.. Tone Realistic. Here are five important facts about her that you most likely didnt know. Before her death, she built a circle of gay and lesbian friends, took several lovers, vacationed in Provincetown (where she enjoyed, in her words, "a gathering of the clan"), and subscribed to several homophile magazines. Lorraine Hansberry. She was an American writer, who stood the literary world on its head with her prolific enigmatic and radical writing. Hansberry attended the University of Wisconsin in Madison in the late 1940s, but she left before completing her degree. Tell us what's wrong with this post? Lorraine Vivian Hansberry (May 19, 1930 - January 12, 1965) was a playwright and writer. In January 2018, the PBS series American Masters released a new documentary, Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart, directed by Tracy Heather Strain. We may all come from different walks of life but we have one common passion - learning through travel. This is her earliest remaining theatrical work. After Simone died on. She was born on May 19, 1930, in Chicago, Illinois. Date of first performance 1959. The group of 1960's would-be idealists, iconoclasts and intellectuals who hang out in the Greenwich Village apartment of Sidney and Iris Brustein (Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan) include a painter, She is a tremendously important historical figure and through the documentary, Strain and her crew are making the public aware of just who Lorraine Hansberry was, what she stood for, and why her radical work is so important to the world today. Hansberry, sadly passed away when she was in her 30s, but she left her mark on the world, and those who know its value are keeping it alive as a relevant piece of history that deserves a second look. Lorraine's uncle, William Leo Hansberry, taught African history at Howard University. Free shipping. 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." On September 18, 2018, the biography Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry, written by scholar Imani Perry, was published by Beacon Press. Race & Ethnicity in America Terkel, Studs. Lorraine used the theater to share her views. Copyright 2023 All Rights ReservedPrivacy Policy, Film & Stage Adaptations of Classic Novels, The first Black woman to have a play staged on Broadway, In 1969, four years after Lorraine Hansberrys death, Nina Simone wrote, Princeton Professor Imani Perry, author of, She addressed social issues in her writings. James Baldwin wrote the introduction to Hansberrys biography, Literary Ladies Guide to the Writing Life. A Reader's Guide to Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun - Pamela Loos 2008-01-01 Presents a critique and analysis of "A Raisin in the Sun," discussing the plot, themes, dramatic devices, and major characters in the play, and includes a brief overview of Hansberry's other works. She tries to rouse her sleeping child and husband, calling out: "Get up!". Hansberry was born in Chicago, Illinois and grew up in a family that was deeply involved in the civil rights movement. We would like, said Lorraine, from you, a moral commitment. He did not turn from her as he had turned away from Jerome. Performers in this pageant included Paul Robeson, his longtime accompanist Lawrence Brown, the multi-discipline artist Asadata Dafora, and numerous others. At Freedom, she worked with W. E. B. The play has also been adapted into a film and has become a classic of American literature and theatre. In the book, readers get bits and pieces of Perry, too, as she describes her journey with Lorraine, detailing her thoughts as both an admirer, and a biographer. Queer Perspectives Lorraine Hansberry The Member of the Wedding The Metamorphosis The Natural The Plague The Plot Against America The Portrait of a Lady The Power of Sympathy The Red Badge of Courage The Road The Road from Coorain The Sound and the Fury The Stone Angel The Stranger The Sun Also Rises The Temple of My Familiar The Three Musketeers BA English MEd Adult Ed & Community & Human Resource Development and ABD in PhD studies in Indust & Org Psychology. Since its original production, A Raisin in the Sun has been revived on Broadway several times, most recently in 2014 with Denzel Washington as Walter Lee Younger. 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. At the newspaper, she worked as a "subscription clerk, receptionist, typist, and editorial assistant" besides writing news articles and editorials. This article is about the top 10 interesting facts about Lorraine Hansberry. Biography & MemoirDisability It ran for 101 performances on Broadway and closed the night she died. She reached out to the world through her plays. Celebrating 100 Years of Howard Zinn, Our Supremely Regressive Court of the Unsettled States: A Resisters Reading List, Free eBook Downloads of Resources for the Movement to End Gun Violence, Observation Post: Individual Liberty vs. Public SafetyOur Distorted Thinking About Gun Control, Black Women Physicians Stories Have Gone Untold for Far Too Long, Sister Rosetta Tharpes Ancestral Rocking and Rolling Aint Through Just Yet, The Rebellious Mrs. Rosa Parks Youll Meet in Peacocks Documentary, Beacon Behind the Books: Meet Matt Davis, Chief Financial Officer, with Clifford Manko. Her favorite topics are psychology, sociology, anthropology, history and religion. Perry truly brings Lorraine to life in this intimate book. Lincoln University's first-year female dormitory is named Lorraine Hansberry Hall. The late artist also has a school, Lorraine Hansberry Academy, in the Bronx named after her as well as an elementary school in Queen, New York, titled in her honor. In 1957, around the time she separated from Nemiroff, Hansberry contacted the Daughters of Bilitis, the San Francisco-based lesbian rights organization, contributing two letters to their magazine, The Ladder, both of which were published under her initials, first "L.H.N." He gathered her unpublished writings and first adapted them into a stage play, To Be Young, Gifted and Black, which ran off Broadway from 1968 to 1969. Holiday House, 1998. The local Chicago government was willing to eject the Hansberrys from their new home but Lorraine's father, Carl Hansberry, took their case to court. The success of the hit pop song "Cindy, Oh Cindy", co-authored by Nemiroff, enabled Hansberry to start writing full-time. 190-71 111th Ave , Saint Albans, NY 11412 is a single-family home listed for-sale at $799,000. Lorraines papers, including her letters and unpublished works, were private for years, with the public hearing only whispers or half-formed truths about some of the most significant aspects of Lorraines identity: her sexuality and her radical political leanings. Her first play, A Raisin in the Sun, continues to be her most influential piece and has managed to find new audiences through the decades, wining Tony Awards in 2004 and 2014 and also the title of Best Revival of a Play. Also in 1963, Hansberry was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. In April 1959, as a sign of her sudden fame just one month after A Raisin in the Sun premiered on Broadway, photographer David Attie did an extensive photo-shoot of Hansberry for Vogue magazine, in the apartment at 337 Bleecker Street where she had written Raisin, which produced many of the best-known images of her today. In 1969 a selection of her writings, adapted by Robert Nemiroff (to whom Hansberry was married from 1953 to 1964), was produced on Broadway as To Be Young, Gifted, and Black and was published in book form in 1970. Mumford stated that Hansberry's lesbianism caused her to feel isolated while A Raisin in the Sun catapulted her to fame; still, while "her impulse to cover evidence of her lesbian desires sprang from other anxieties of respectability and conventions of marriage, Hansberry was well on her way to coming out." Paul Robeson and SNCC organizer James Forman gave eulogies. The fascinating facts about Lorraine Hansberry following illustrate her development as a Black woman, activist, and writer. Then, she smiled. Learn about her personal life,. She is remembered for her first play, A Raisin in the Sun, which opened on Broadway in 1959, just six years before her death - and sometimes for her memoir, which was the inspiration for Nina Simone . Lorraine was taught: "Above all, there were two things which were never to be betrayed: the family and the race.". She even wrote anonymous letters to the publication alluding to her own lesbian relationships. In 2013, Hansberry was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama, in recognition of her contributions to American culture and civil rights activism. On the night before their wedding in 1953, Nemiroff and Hansberry protested against the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in New York City. . Lorraines goal was to change society for the better. For local insights and insiders travel tips that you wont find anywhere else, search any keywords in the top right-hand toolbar on this page. The play was a critical and commercial success. I saw it on Broadway, its an excellent play and homage to Lorraine Hansberry! Best known for her plays, Hansberry was the first black woman to write a Broadway drama; A Raisin in the . Lorraine Hansberry became involved in the Civil Rights Movement in 1963 and joined people like Lena Horne and James Baldwin to test Robert Kennedys position on civil rights. Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965) was a playwright, writer, and activist. Fast Facts: Lorraine Hansberry Free shipping. Du Bois, whose office was in the same building, and other Black Pan-Africanists. Being nothing short of brilliant in her approach, Hansberry wielded the full power of the pen in the punchy writing style that was and still is hard to ignore. The title is found in the PBS new American Masters category under Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart. In the documentary youll discover that Hansberry truly spoke truth to power.. Her best-known work, the play A Raisin in the Sun, highlights the lives of black Americans in Chicago living under racial segregation. As the first-ever black woman to author a play performed on. She was born to Carl Augustus Hansberry and Nonnie Louise. On June 20, 1953, Hansberry married Robert Nemiroff, a Jewish publisher, songwriter, and political activist. James Baldwin believed "it is not at all farfetched to suspect that what she saw contributed to the strain which killed her, for the effort to which Lorraine was dedicated is more than enough to kill a man.". I am in Houston and may go see Clybourne Park at the Midtown A&T Center before I leave town next week. Later, Hansberry would maintain her own close bonds with Du Bois, Robeson, Langston Hughes, and James Baldwin. Much of her work during this time concerned the African struggles for liberation and their impact on the world. Lorraine Hansberry was an African-American playwright, writer and activist who lived from 1930 to 1965. A penetrating psychological study of the personalities and emotional conflicts within a working-class black family in Chicago, A Raisin in the Sun was directed by actor Lloyd Richards, the first African American to direct a play on Broadway since 1907. Updates? Fact 6: In 1963, she met with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy in New York City days after the protests and unrest in Birmingham Alabama (along with her close friend James Baldwin, Harry Belafonte, Clarence Jones and Jerome Smith, among others). The Washington, D.C., office searched her passport files "in an effort to obtain all available background material on the subject, any derogatory information contained therein, and a photograph and complete description," while officers in Milwaukee and Chicago examined her life history. Her cousin is the flutist, percussionist, and composer Aldridge Hansberry. A selection of her writings was produced on Broadway asTo Be Young, Gifted, and Black(1969; book 1970). 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. However, Hansberry admired Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex. She was also nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play, among the four Tony Awards that the play was nominated for in 1960. In 1959, Hansberry was awarded the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play for A Raisin in the Sun, making her the first black playwright and the youngest playwright to win the award at the time. She was the first African-American female author to have a play performed on Broadway. Written when she was just twenty-eight, Lorraine Hansberry's landmark A Raisin in the Sun is listed . In 2013, Hansberry was also inducted into the Legacy Walk, making her the first Chicago-native to receive the honour, along with a position in the American Theatre Hall of Fame in the same year. She was a member of the National Organization for Women and wrote about womens issues in her personal journals and in her writing. Hansberry was born in Chicago, Illinois and grew up in a family that was deeply involved in the civil rights movement. also named Lorraine Hansberry the Godmother of her daughter, Lisa Simone. Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965) Hansberry was an activist and playwright best known for her groundbreaking play "A Raisin in the Sun," about a struggling Black family on Chicago's South Side. When Lorraine was seven years old, the family bought a house in a mostly white neighborhood. . She continued to write plays, short stories, and articles in addition to delivering speeches regarding race relations in the United States. Publisher Random House. Du Bois , poet Langston Hughes, singer, actor, and political activist Paul Robeson, musician Duke Ellington, and Olympic gold medalist Jesse Owens. Download Our Free Black Liberation eBook Bundle! Hansberrys work and activism were instrumental in advancing the cause of civil rights in America, and she remains an important figure in the history of the movement. It was always, Marx, Lenin and revolutionreal girls talk.. 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. April 14, 2021. . Hansberry was the daughter of parents who were also outspoken advocates for civil rights. In 2013, Hansberry was inducted into the Legacy Walk, an outdoor public display that celebrates LGBT history and people. Thank you for this detailed and well-written article about an amazing young woman! She explored the issues of colonialism and imperialism through her own lens as well as the female perspective. Lorraine Hansberry was born on May 19, 1930, in Chicago, Illinois, United States. She wrote about her experiences as a lesbian in her unpublished journals and letters. $5.42. The statue will be sent on a tour of major US cities. Her mother, Nannie Perry, was a schoolteacher active in the Republican Party. As well as being a political activists, Lorraine Hansberry was also a brilliant writer. Fact 5: Indeed, Lorraine was an outspoken political activist from a young age. Date of first publication 1959. This money comes from the deceased Mr. Younger's life insurance policy. At the Lorraine Hansberry Literary Trust, which represents and oversees the late writer's literary work, there's a guiding mantra: "Lorraine Is Of The Future." Rachel Brosnahan and Oscar . Lorraine Hansberry is best known as the playwright of A Raisin In The Sun, the groundbreaking play about a working class African-American family on the South Side of Chicago that illustrates how the American Dream is limited for Black Americans.The play is widely hailed as one of the greatest-ever achievements in theater. In 2013, more than twenty years after Nemiroff's death, the new executor released the restricted material to scholar Kevin J. Mumford. She was particularly interested in the situation of Egypt, "the traditional Islamic 'cradle of civilization,' where women had led one of the most important fights anywhere for the equality of their sex.". When she died of pancreatic cancer in 1965, she was only 34 years old. 2. In his remarks, President Obama noted that Lorraine Hansberry refused to be confined by any identity but her own, and helped blaze a trail for generations of Americans who have been inspired by her example.. Religion Please enable JavaScript if you would like to comment on this blog. Lorraine believed that the artists voice in whatever medium was to be as an agent for social change. Lorraine Hansberry Elementary School was located in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans. Hansberry graduated from Betsy Ross Elementary in 1944 and from Englewood High School in 1948. Bella Sanchez is a recent graduate from Boston University, and the marketing intern for Beacon Press. 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. In fact, she was an active participant in the civil rights movement and used her talents as a writer and playwright to shed light on issues of race, gender and class in America. In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Hansberry in the biographical dictionary 100 Greatest African Americans. She was the daughter of a real estate entrepreneur, Carl Hansberry, and schoolteacher, Nannie Hansberry, as well as the niece of Pan-Africanist scholar and college professor Leo Hansberry. Lorraine Hansberry, child of a cultured, middle-class black family but early exposed to the poverty and discrimination suffered by most blacks in America, fought passionately against racism in her writings and throughout her life. I could think only of beauty, isolated and misunderstood but beauty still . . In 1964, Hansberry and Nemiroff divorced but continued to work together. The production also led Hansberry to become the first black playwright and the youngest American to win a New York Critics Circle Award. Simone wrote the song with the poet Weldon Irvine and told him that she wanted lyrics that would "make black children all over the world feel good about themselves forever." Carl died in 1946 when Lorraine was fifteen years old; "American racism helped kill him," she later said. At the same time, she said, "some of the first people who have died so far in this struggle have been white men.". In 1959, Hansberry commented that women who are "twice oppressed" may become "twice militant". It seems illogical that someone who was such a font of creativity, so full of life and laughter and accomplishments, had such a tragically short life. This script was called "superb" but also rejected. Louis Sachar. Type of work Play. Fact 3: Lorraine was a talented visual artist. Leo Hansberry was a prominent figure in the Pan-Africanist movement, and he founded the African Civilization section at Howard University, where he was a professor of African history. Despite her being married, Hansberry secretly affirmed her homosexuality in various correspondence and in short stories later discovered in archives. Lorraine Hansberry was a history-making playwright and author who became the first Black woman to have a play produced on Broadway. Whether you want to learn the history of a city, or you simply need a recommendation for your next meal, Discover Walks Team offers an ever-growing travel encyclopaedia. Some books that he created include Wayside School Gets A Little Stranger (1995), Sideways . The FBI began surveillance of Hansberry when she prepared to go to the Montevideo peace conference. She moved to New York City and became involved in the arts scene, working as a writer and editor for various publications. Hansberry inspired the Nina Simone song "To Be Young, Gifted and Black", whose title-line came from Hansberry's autobiographical play. | Faced . Both Hansberry's were active in the Chicago Republican Party. He even took his battle against racially restrictive housing covenants to the Supreme Court, winning a major victory in the landmark case Hansberry v. Lee. Hansberry's funeral was held in Harlem on January 15, 1965. The curtain rises on a dim, drab room. However, in 2013, President Barack Obama posthumously awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in recognition of her contributions to the arts and the civil rights movement. The youngest of four siblings, she was seven years younger than Mamie, her . A Raisin in the Sun Mass Market Paperbound Lorraine Hansberry. 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. Hansberry was born May 19, 1930, in Chicago, Illinois, the youngest of four children. Lorraine Hansberry was an avid civil rights activist because she understood clearly, that people need a champion in this life. Despite a warm reception in Chicago, the show never made it to Broadway. When she was young, her family famously fought against racial segregation, attempting to buy a home that was covered by a racially restrictive covenantultimately leading to the Supreme Court case Hansberry v. Lee. . In Perrys words, this moment captures the tension . Hansberrys work as a writer and activist was groundbreaking in its exploration of the experiences of African American women. Not only did she have a play, but her drama, A. Lorraine Hansberry was the niece of Leo Hansberry, who was a Pan-Africanist scholar and college professor. Hansberry was particularly interested in the intersections between race, class, and gender, and she believed that these issues were all interconnected. Hansberry was a closeted lesbian. . The title of Hansberrys now-iconic play A Raisin In the Sun was inspired by Hughes poem Harlem. One could argue that the play illustrated the poems sentiment: Quotes from A Raisin in the Sun She was the fourth child born to Nannie Perry Hansberry and Carl Augustus Hansberry in Chicago, IL. These were important voices for the movement to bring equality for all people as a basic right of all within the United States. Her father, Carl Augustus Hansberry, was a successful real estate entrepreneur involved with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Urban League. An innovative network of theatres and community organisations, founded by the National Theatre in 2017 to grow nationwide engagement with theatre, expands. Drake Facts. I found myself wishing I could have been Lorraines friend, or at the very least, a fly on the wall during some of her passionate discussions about politics, race, literature and art with friends and colleagues. The play opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on March 11, 1959, and was a great success. Since that time, other artists including Aretha Franklin have covered the song, whichbegins: To be young, gifted and black With the help of the NAACP, he eventually won the right to stay, but never recovered from the emotional stress of their legal battles ("Lorraine Hansberry";Hansberry 21). How would you rate this article? An author, a playwright and an activist, Lorraine Hansberry was born on May 19, 1930, in Chicago, Illinois. Theatre Nation Partnerships network extends to every region in England. 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 the only other play given a contemporary production was The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window. To be young, gifted and black Both of these talented writers wanted to incorporate themes of race and sexual identity into their stage work, something that was considered quite radical at the time. Taken from us far too soon. . The 15th was also Dr. King's birthday. Copyright 2016 FamousAfricanAmericans.org, Museum Dedicated to African American History and Culture is Set to Open in 2016, Scholarships for African Americans Black Scholarships, Top 10 Most Famous Black Actors of All Time. To celebrate the newspaper's first birthday, Hansberry wrote the script for a rally at Rockland Palace, a then-famous Harlem hall, on "the history of the Negro newspaper in America and its fighting role in the struggle for a people's freedom, from 1827 to the birth of FREEDOM." The granddaughter of a freed slave, Lorraine Vivian Hansberry was born on May 19, 1930, to a successful real estate broker and a school teacher who resided in Chicago, Illinois. Lorraines mother, Nannie Hansberry, was also active in the struggle for civil rights. Du Bois, who served as one of her mentors. $3.52. Baldwin remembers: Her face changed and changed, the way Sojourner Truth's face must have changed and changed . 236 pp. . There are a million boys and girls The granddaughter of a freed enslaved person, and the youngest by seven years of four children, Lorraine Vivian Hansberry 3rd was born on May 19, 1930, in Chicago, Illinois. This penetrating psychological study of a working-class black family on the south side of Chicago in the late 1940s reflected Hansberry's own experiences of racial harassment after her prosperous family moved into a white neighbourhood. Patricia and Fredrick McKissack wrote a children's biography of Hansberry, Young, Black, and Determined, in 1998. She also enjoys creative writing, content writing on nearly any topic, because as a lifelong learner, she loves research. Time and place written 1950s, New York. Lorraine Hansberry's ex-husband and dear friend, the songwriter and poet Robert Nemiroff, became her literary executor after her death in 1965. An alarm sounds, and a woman wakes. Clybourne Park is a "spin-off" of Lorraine Hansberry's famous 1959 play, A Raisin in the Sun, meaning that it centers around some of the play's peripheral events and characters.Specifically, the main characters of A Raisin in the Sun the Younger familywill eventually move into the house in which Clybourne Park is set. She was also the youngest playwright and the first Black winner of the prestigious Drama Critic's Circle Award for Best Play. Born on the 19 th of May in 1930, in Chicago, Illinois, Lorraine Hansberry was a bright daughter of Carl Augustus Hansberry, a political activist, while her mother, Nannie Louise, was a schoolteacher. Raisin, her best-known work, would eventually become a highly lauded film starring Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee, Claudia McNeil, and Diana Sands. Lorraine Hansberry, likely at a welcoming event for the African-American Students Foundation in 1959. 1. Comments (0). Lorraine Vivian Hansberry (May 19, 1930 - January 12, 1965) was a playwright and writer. On June 9, 2022, the Lilly Awards Foundation unveiled a statue of Hansberry in Times Square. . Lorraine was inspired by her father and the play that she wrote may have been a little ahead of its time, but it won top prize from the prestigious New York Drama Critics Circle, which was no small feat. The Lorraine Hansberry residence, listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2021, is nationally significant for its association with the pioneering Black lesbian playwright, writer, and activist, Lorraine Hansberry.