HANSBERRY, LORRAINE

HANSBERRY, LORRAINE Born in 1930, Lorraine Hansberry went on to become a gifted and highly acclaimed black play­wright during the late 1950's and early 1960's. Her most famous play was A Raisin in the Sun which opened on Broadway on March 11, 1959, and which had a highly successful and profit­able run. Winning the New York Drama Critics' Award for 1959, Raisin was Lorraine Hansberry's first and last great dramatic triumph, with continuing off-Broadway and Broadway re-runs to this day. Her second play, The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window (1964), did not win the critical acclaim given to Raisin, and less than a half year after it opened, in January 1965, she died prematurely of cancer.