![]() ![]() When Malcolm X chastised her publicly for having a white husband, she clapped back - and he later apologized. Instead, Hansberry told him to get the lead out and do more. Kennedy when the Attorney general had a glittering group of black activists and celebrities over to pat him on the back for the work the Kennedy administration had done in civil rights. In May 1963, she was invited to meet Robert F. "She was willing to risk her fame and her recognition for her political convictions." Hansberry was not just talking the talk, Imani Perry says. " And white people, most of them, were still urging patience. "It's because since 1619 Negroes have tried every method of communication, of transformation of their situation. ![]() "It isn't as if we just got up today and said 'What can we do to irritate America?' " Hansberry pointed out, to faint chuckles. ![]() In a town hall meeting soon after, Hansberry tried to explain the thinking behind the protest (which actually became much smaller in scale because not all groups got behind it). In New York, a group of protesters proposed blocking city streets to tie up traffic. So Negroes, as we were then called, were getting impatient with the abundance of segregation that remained. Memories of that time eventually inspired the play.) Carl Hansberry won, but the neighbors in the family's new, formerly all-white neighborhood were about as welcoming as the white residents of Clybourne Park were in Raisin. (In fact, Hansberry's father, a prosperous local businessman, made history when his lawsuit to break racial covenants in Chicago's housing market went all the way to the Supreme Court. Board had been decided, but that didn't mean separate-but-equal had been erased. "She reveled in her identity," Perry explains, "even as she railed against injustice." And Hansberry did it with perfect diction and aplomb. In other words, she was intersectional before intersectionality became a thing.Īnd even though Hansberry's fame put her in the company of some of the country's most celebrated artists and intellectuals, Perry argues that she never lost grasp of her culture and people. She was an anti-colonialist before independences had been won in Africa and the Caribbean." She identified as a lesbian and thought about LGBT organizing before there was a gay rights movement. "She was a feminist before the feminist movement. In many areas Hansberry was ahead of her time, says Perry. Du Bois, Paul Robeson and Langston Hughes, to name a few, and her rich and complicated personal life. Perry examines Hansberry's relationship with mentors W.E.B. It begins with her childhood as part of the politically active black elite on Chicago's South Side. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Looking for Lorraine Subtitle The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry Author Imani Perry ![]()
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