Raisin in the Sun 1959 by Lorraine Hansberry

1
Raisin in the Sun (1959)by Lorraine Hansberry

• Week 10, 21 October 2008
• (b. May 19, 1930 d. January
  12, 1965)

2
Raisin as prelude to Joe Turner

• Not an especially difficult play
• By now most should be able to sort out
  characterization, conflicts, plot elements,
  setting.
• Play gives pretext to provide background on
  African-American history, largely in preparation
  for the next play
• Ill go through background then open floor to
  discussion of background and the play itself.

3
Biographical

• Born Chicago May 19, 1930
• Middle class family, deeply involved in black
  community
• Father ran successful real estate agency
• And was active in NAACP, big donor
• Mother politically active
• Leading black figures (Paul Robeson, Duke
  Ellington, Joe Louis) passed through home

4
The politics of home ownership

• 1938 father Carl Hansberry risks jail,
  challenges Chicago real estate rules moves
  family into all-white neighborhood
• Family faced considerable resistance
• Whites protesting outside house, bricks thrown
• Mob broken up by armed body guard
• Illinois court ordered them to vacate, but
  Supreme Court overruled in landmark case,
  Hansberry vs. Lee (1940)
• In high school, LH suffered frequent racist
  insults

5
American dream involves material prosperity,
often home ownership

• Definitions for students do not present dream as
  already accomplished
• Were homesteaders who left the big cities of the
  east to find happiness and their piece of land in
  the unknown wilderness pursuing these inalienable
  Rights? Were the immigrants who came to the
  United States looking for their bit of life,
  liberty and the pursuit of happiness, their
  Dream? And what did the desire of the veteran of
  World War II - to settle down, to have a home, a
  car and a family - tell us about this evolving
  Dream? Is the American Dream attainable by all
  Americans? Would Martin Luther King feel his
  Dream was attained? Did Malcolm X realize his
  Dream?
• Manifest Destiny and homesteading (taking
  Indian land, setting up new territories) fed this
  dream
• http//memory.loc.gov/learn/lessons/97/dream/thedr
  eam.html

6
Frederick Douglass on Self Made Man

• FD African-American escaped slave, abolitionist
  leader/writer
• My theory of self-made men is, then, simply
  this that they are men of work. Whether or not
  such men have acquired material, moral or
  intellectual excellence, honest labor faithfully,
  steadily and persistently pursued, is the best,
  if not the only, explanation of their success.
• Cf content of our character rather than
  material success

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Historian James Truslow Adams distinguishes the
dream from mere materialism.

• It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages
  merely, but a dream of social order in which each
  man and each woman shall be able to attain to the
  fullest stature of which they are innately
  capable, and be recognized by others for what
  they are, regardless of the fortuitous
  circumstances of birth or position. (1931)

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Contradictions in the American dream

• From Declaration of Independence (1776)
• We hold these truths to be self-evident, that
  all men are created equal, that they are endowed
  by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,
  that among these are life, liberty and the
  pursuit of happiness.
• Constitution (and amendments) as battlefield in
  American struggle with racism

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Martin Luther King on this contradiction

• 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." I have a dream
  that one day even the state of Mississippi, a
  state sweltering with the heat of injustice,
  sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be
  transformed into an oasis of freedom and
  justice.I have a dream that my four little
  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.
• Felt America must make good on the check
• delivered 28 August 1963, at the Lincoln
  Memorial, Washington D.C.
• http//www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihavea
  dream.htm

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Langston Hughes, 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?
• http//encarta.msn.com/media_461535464_761556401_-
  1_1/langston_hughes_E2809CharlemE2809D.html
• Discuss anyone familiar with Malcolm vs.
  Martin, as in Spike Lees Do the Right Thing?

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Hansberry writes Raisin

• Title taken from Langston Hughes poem, to which
  well return
• Play sent to rising actor Sidney Poitier, who
  agreed to play lead
• Play opens March 11, 1959 538 performances
• Wins Drama Critics Award over T. Williams and
  Eugene ONeill
• Hansberry becomes celebrity-activist part of
  group of African-Americans who met with Robert F.
  Kennedy to discuss racism in USA
• Died 1965, age 34 (pancreatic cancer)

12
setting

• Younger living room, Chicago apartment
• Crowded three generations of family living
  together
• Bathroom shared with other families
• Not very much money around

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Dreams Compared

• Walters dream open liquor store
• Capital insurance check, death of father
• Beneathas dream go to medical school ()
• Joseph Asagai vs George assimilation issue
• Mamas dream down-payment on a house
• Linders dreamrefused.

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Next week Joe Turner, first half