Lorraine Hansberry
Lorraine Vivian Hansberry (May 19, 1930 – January 12, 1965) was an African-American playwright and writer. Hansberry was the first black female author to have a play performed on Broadway. Her best known work, the play A Raisin in the Sun, highlights the lives of Black Americans living under racial segregation in Chicago. Hansberry's family had struggled against segregation, challenging a restrictive covenant and eventually provoking the Supreme Court case Hansberry v. Lee. The title of the play was taken from the poem "Harlem" by Langston Hughes: "What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?" At the young age of 29, she won the New York's Drama Critic's Circle Award — making her the first African American dramatist, the fifth woman, and the youngest playwright to do so.