Lorraine Hansberry

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(Cheney 46-53). Although the Hansberry family was comfortably settled as middle-class economic status, they were still subject to the racial segregation and discrimination characteristic of the period, and they were most active in opposing it (Smith 147). Lorraine’s writing career was started in the area of magazines. She was writing for Paul Robeson’s Freedom magazine. At this time, Lorraine would always say, "I was born black and female," these were the twin identities that would dominate her life and her work. This was her source of motivation, by retelling this statement to herself and the others around her. Another concern of hers was the human conditions as blacks experienced it. She spent much of her life making an effort to change these conditions (Cheney 140; Tripp 2). ’s first play was named, "The Crystal Stair." It was named after a line in the Langston Hughes poem, "Mother to Son." Lorraine later changed the title of her play to, "A ...

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of white neighborhoods. It also portrayed slavery as uncontrollable and completely the work victimizing institutions designed to exploit cheaper labor. This play also focuses on the problem of what a family should do with $10,000 that a mother receives as an insurance payment after the death of her husband. Lorraine got the idea for that part of the play directly out of her own home, in the way that this was the same problem Lorraine’s mother faced at the time of her husband’s death. (Magill, Gre4at Women…200). "Because the play explores a universal theme-the search for the freedom and better life- the majority of its first audience loved the work (Draper 951)." ...

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