(May 19, 1930 - January 12, 1965)
"What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?" (Harlem by Langston Hughes)
Born in the Washington Park Subdivision of the South Side of Chicago, incurring the wrath of their white neighbors, she knew the impact of racism on her and her family. She wrote about another black family who wanted a better life in a suburban white neighborhood in her award-winning play Raisin in the Sun.
She moved to New York City in 1950 to pursue her career as a writer, attended The New School, and moved to Harlem where she became involved in activist struggles such as the fight against evictions. She joined the staff of the black newspaper Freedom, edited by Louis E. Burnham and published by Paul Robeson and worked with W.E.B. Du Bois. she was an activist for gay rights and wrote about feminism and homophobia.
On March 11, 1959, Raisin in the Sun became the first play written by an African American woman to be produced on Broadway. At the age of 29 she was the youngest American playwright and only the fifth woman to receive the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play.
An ardent advocate for women's rights, she commented that women who are "twice oppressed" may become 'twice militant". She held out some hope for male allies of women, writing in an unpublished essay: "If by some miracle women should not ever utter a single protest against their condition there would still exist among men those who could not endure in peace until her liberation had been achieved."
After a battle with pancreatic cancer she died at the age of 34. 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." At her funeral, the presiding minister recited a message from Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. "Her creative ability and her profound grasp of the deep social issues confronting the world today will remain an inspiration to generations yet unborn."
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