A Raisin in the Sun
Background Information
“A Dream Deferred”
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?
- Langston Hughes
A Note on the Title
• Lorraine Hansberry took the title of A
Raisin in the Sun from a line in Langston
Hughes’s famous 1951 poem “Harlem.”
• “Harlem” captures the tension between the
need for black expression and the
impossibility of that expression because of
American society’s oppression of its black
population.
• In the poem, Hughes asks whether a
“dream deferred”—a dream put on hold—
withers up “like a raisin in the sun.”
More on the title
• His lines confront the racist and dehumanizing
attitude prevalent in American society before
the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
• Hansberry’s reference to Hughes’s poem in
her play’s title highlights the importance of
dreams in A Raisin in the Sun and the struggle
that her characters face to realize their
individual dreams, a struggle tied to the more
fundamental black dream of equality in
America.
The Great Migration
The Great Migration is a term used to describe the mass
migration of African Americans from the southern
United States to the industrial centers of the Northeast
and Midwest between the 1910s and 1960s.
Up South: African American Migration to Chicago
A Raisin in the Sun was written in
the 1950’S. What do you know
about the 1950’S?
1950's Video
Lorraine Hansberry
• May 19, 1930 – January
12, 1965
• African American
playwright
– Also an author of political
speeches, letters, and essays
– Daughter of a prominent
real-estate broker and
the niece of a Harvard
University professor of
African history
Early Life
• Youngest of four children of Carl Augustus
Hansberry (a wealthy, real estate broker in
segregated Chicago) and Nannie Louise Perry
• She grew up on the south side of Chicago in
the Woodlawn neighborhood.
Controversial Move
 In 1937, her father purchased a home in the
Washington Park Subdivision an all-white
neighborhood, where they faced racial
discrimination
– Washington Park had a restrictive covenant that
said no black person could live in or own a
home in the subdivision
 Washington Park fought Hansberry and they went
to court in 1937
Supreme Court case of Hansberry
versus Lee
• Hansberry's father engaged in a legal battle against
a racially restrictive covenant that attempted to
prohibit African-American families from buying
homes in the area.
• Though victors in the Supreme Court, Hansberry's
family was subjected to what Hansberry would
later describe as a "hellishly hostile white
neighborhood."
• This experience later inspired her to write her
most famous work, A Raisin in the Sun.
“Hansberry Decision Opens 500 New
Homes to Race”
The Chicago Defender
Saturday, November 16, 1940
Later Hansberry
• Finding college to be
uninspiring, Hansberry left
in 1950 to pursue her career
as a writer in New York
City.
• She worked on the staff of a
Black newspaper called
Freedom. It was at this time
she wrote A Raisin in the
Sun.
Civil Rights Movement
• What was the Civil Right Movement?
• What was the goal of this movement?
• Were there any other movements during the
period?
Social Background
• Published in 1959, four
years after Rosa Parks’ was
arrested for refusing to give
up her seat to a white
person on a bus, sparking
the Civil Rights Movement,
Hansberry’s play illustrates
black America’s struggle to
gain equal access to
opportunity and expression
of cultural identity.
Sentiments in A Raisin… will be echoed by MLK
in later speeches, marches, and rallies
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Civil-Rights Leader
1929-1968
I have a dream… a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the
true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident:
that all men are created equal.’
Cont’d dreams represented in the play and
later echoed by King
• I have a dream that my four
children will one day live in a
nation where they will not be
judged by the color of their
skin but by the content of
their character.
• I have a dream…where little
black boys and black girls
will be able to join hands
with little white boys and
white girls and walk together
as sisters and brothers.
MLK
• How does King help to develop the idea of
the American Dream?
• What does he do to the existing American
Dream?
A Raisin in the Sun
• Originally title “A Crystal Stair” from
another Langston Hughes’ poem
• First production in 1959
• Known as the "movin’ on up" morality
play of the 1960s
– Morality play - It uses allegorical characters to teach
the audience moral lessons
The Play
 Opened on Broadway on March 11, 1959
 Cast includes Sidney Poitier, Claudia McNeil, and
Ruby Dee
 The New York Drama Critics name it the Best
American Play of 1959
 Ran for nearly 2 years on Broadway
 Made into a film starring most of the Broadway
cast in 1961
Basics of the Play
• The story is based upon her family's own
experiences growing up in Chicago's
Woodlawn neighborhood.
• A Raisin in the Sun was the first play
written by a black woman to be produced
on Broadway, as well as the first play with a
black director (Lloyd Richards) on
Broadway
Importance of the Play
• A Raisin in the Sun can be considered a
turning point in American art and drama
because it addresses so many issues
important during the 1950s in the United
States
• Hansberry creates in the Younger family
one of the first honest depictions of a black
family on an American stage
…Importance of Play
• Broaches
important issues
and conflicts,
such as poverty,
discrimination,
and the
construction of
African-American
racial identity
Themes to Look For
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Dreams
Money
Family
Women’s Rights
Racial Tensions and Discrimination
Assimilation
Cultural Heritage
Self-Identity and Self-Expression
Symbols
• Definition: Some reoccurring image that
stands for an idea beyond itself
• Be out on the lookout for symbols
throughout the play!
Big Questions
• To what extent do our dreams define who were
are? When is it OK or right to “defer” our dreams?
• How and where did racism occur after slavery and
segregation? Where does it exist today?
• What about sexism?
• What does one need in order to find self-identity?
To “know thyself?”