A RAISIN IN THE SUN American Players theatre study guide

The World of the Play

A Raisin in the Sun. Ever wondered why it is called that? The play’s title was inspired by Langston Hughes poem “Harlem” written in 1951

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?

A product of its time, like most plays are, however “A Raisin in the Sun” has been considered “One of the best plays ever written” by multiple publications of its time and today. (Time Out/The Independent)

This story exists in the heart of an American family trying to navigate their own family dynamic, their dreams, and their dignity. A Black American family, in the face of grief, racism, and claustrophobia fights for their family one dream at a time.

The play first debuted on Broadway in 1959.

Time Period & Setting

Set in South Side Chicago in the early 1950’s, the play is considered a cultural phenomenon, as it was a glimpse into the very relatable circumstances of many Black American families. The play lifts up multiple perspectives inside a family trying to overcome, and the Younger family represents generations of the Black experience. Most Black families during the 1950’s were either trying to move into better thriving areas - or were forced out, by way of “Jim Crow" laws and systemic redlining. Our main character is the Black family and the consistent prejudice of ‘the man’.

Circumstances of the Time

• Redlining - Government efforts and policies of refusal for loans and mortgages for African-American families and other communities of color while providing housing to white, middle class and lower class families in new suburban communities.

After the Great Depression, the president issued The New Deal. This brought the promise of federal backing of loans guaranteeing mortgages, specifically for white buyers. “The FHA had a manual which explicitly said that it was risky to make mortgage loans in predominantly Black areas,” -Rich Kahlenburg. Thus restricting financial progress to certain Black populated areas. If a Black family was to buy a home in a white area, the Federal Housing Association would then not lend any more loans to folks in that area because it was considered at risk of “being integrated.” The FHA only wanted to insure homes in white areas, upon the map there is a red line outing most negro populated areas in which the FHA would deny any funding for home loans.

• Plessy V Ferguson - Landmark 1896 Supreme Court case that outlined “separate but equal” services and circumstances between races are acceptable as long as they were in effect “equal.” This case would prevent Black people from experiencing equality of life in America as legal doctrine until Brown v. The Board of Education overturned it in 1954. This ruling legalized segregation and put in part many legalized rules called Jim Crow Laws.
• Jim Crow Laws 1870’s-1965- A collection of state and local laws that legalized racial segregation. These laws helped to normalize racism and the legal difference between Black folks and white. Separate bathrooms, water fountains, lunch counters, train cars, etc.
• Brown V Board of Education - Landmark 1954 Supreme Court case that outlined “separate but equal” services circumstances were unconstitutional and in effect not actually equal. When Linda Brown was denied entry into an all white elementary school, her father Oliver Brown files a class action lawsuit claiming that the education for Black students was not equal to white students.

The Playwright - Lorraine Hansberry

Lorraine Vivian Hansberry was born May 19, 1930 and raised on the South Side of Chicago. She was the youngest of four children to Carl Augustus Hansberry and Nannie Perry Hansberry: A successful real estate agent and school teacher respectively. That success and stature in the middle-class did not protect them from segregation, however. When Lorraine was 8 years old, her family tried to move into a “restricted neighborhood''. Back then, a “restricted neighborhood” was one in which white realtors refused to sell to Black buyers regardless of interest or funds. Carl Hansberry was able to secretly purchase a house for his family in one of these “restricted neighborhoods” in South Side in 1937. Not long after, the family were threatened by their white neighbors and a mob threw a brick through their front window, almost hitting Lorraine. This harrowing exchange prompted a series of court cases. The first, with the Supreme Court of Illinois, who ruled in favor of restrictive covenants, forcing the family to leave their new home.

But the second, culminated in the famous Hansberry v. Lee U.S. Supreme Court case who reversed the decision. This legal doctrine specified that white people could not bar Black people from living and buying property in their same neighborhoods. This episode was a critical memory for Lorraine fueling her activism and writing around the country against racial inequality and the oppression of homosexuality. A queer woman, her early childhood would serve as the backdrop for A Raisin in the Sun making her the first Black playwright to appear on Broadway and the youngest American to win the New York Critics’ Circle Award. She died of pancreatic cancer, Jan 12th, 1965 at the age of 34.