Origin of “A Raisin in the Sun”

Inspiration comes from everywhere, including life’s hardest moments. The idea for the world-renowned play “A Raisin in the Sun” originated from playwright Lorraine Hansberry’s own story of her home and racism. In 1937, her family bought a home in the southside Chicago neighborhood called Woodlawn, a white neighborhood. A brave move. Then the brick came through the window and it was game on.

At that time, a common housing discrimination tool, known as a restrictive covenant, prohibited real estate from being “sold, leased to, or permitted to be occupied by any person of the colored race.” When neighbors demanded that the Hansberry family leave the property, they refused. Thus began a three-year legal battle that went all the way to the Supreme Court, Hansberry v. Lee, 311. The resulting decision allowed the Hansberry family to stay in their home but did not eliminate race-based real estate ordinances entirely. That would happen eight years later in Shelley v. Kraimer, 334.

Imagine being the eight-year-old Lorraine, seeing the glass of her home’s window shattered by her neighbors who hated her skin color. Imagine seeing her mother roam the house with her loaded Luger to protect her family at night. Imagine the feeling of peril in the one place in the world where you should feel safe.

A situation that would have frightened the majority of us inspired Lorraine. After moving to Greenwich Village, she went to work on her play. The title “A Raisin in the Sun” is a line from the Langston Hughes 1951 poem “Harlem”.

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?

Lorraine Hansberry exploded – on the page, on the stage, in the newspaper called Freedom. She got involved, she wrote, she raised her voice. She attended a meeting with Robert F Kennedy, arranged by James Baldwin. She was surveilled by the FBI because of her work. Yet, she pressed on as an activist, a writer, and a voice for the oppressed.

A Raisin the Sun debuted in 1953 on Broadway, making Hansberry the first black female playwright to achieve this pinnacle of theatre.  The play was made into a movie starring Sydney Poitier in 1961.

Sometimes the most beautiful art is rendered from the deepest pain.