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William Henry Brown's King Shotaway
William Henry Brown, of the African Grove Theater in New York City, is credited with writing the first black American play, King Shotaway in 1823 (Perkins), -
The Underground Railroad by Pauline Hopkins
In 1879, Pauline Hopkins writes The Underground Railroad, credited as the first play written by a black woman in American theater. The first performance of the play takes place in 1880 in Boston. -
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Black Women Playwrights in American theater prior to Hansberry's Landmark Play A Raisin in the Sun
Prior to Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, black women published approximately seventy plays and pageants. Written primarily after 1918, these plays conveyed black women's attitudes about such topics as lynching, poverty, women's rights, motherhood, disenfranchised war heroes, miscegenation, family loyalty, education, and the church (Perkins). -
National Urban League founded and headquartered in NYC
Committee on Urban Conditions Among Negroes established on September 29, 1910 in New York City, eventually merging
with the Committee for the Improvement of Industrial Conditions Among Negroes in New York (founded in New York in 1906), and the National League for the Protection of Colored Women (founded in 1905) to form the National League on Urban Conditions Among Negroes. In 1920, name
is shortened to the National Urban League. -
Angelina Weld Grimké's Rachel presented by the Drama Committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
With Grimké's Rachel, "Washington, DC, [gives] birth to the first twentieth-century full-length play written, performed, and produced by black Americans" (Perkins). Billed as a “race play” in three acts, Rachel explores lynching and its devastating psychological effects on a young woman "in the first attempt to use the stage for race propaganda” (Perkins). Following Rachel, a wave of black women playrights emerge, as well as Willis Richardson, who becomes the first black dramatist on Broadway. -
Mary P. Burrill's They that Sit in Darkness
In 1919, Burrill's They That Sit in Darkness is published by the Birth Control Review. The play, which addresses the issues of women's rights to information pertaining to birth control, is regarded as possibly one of the first black feminist plays (Perkins). -
Juno and the Paycock
Juno and the Paycock by Sean O'Casey is first produced. Hansberry is later inspired by a university production of the play. Particularly, "O'Casey's ability to universalize the suffering of the Irish without sacrificing specificity" provides significant inspiration for Hansberry's own writing of her first play, A Raisin in the Sun (Wilkerson). -
Lorraine Vivian Hansberry is born
Born to Carl Augustus Hansberry and Nannie Perry in Chicago, Illinois, Lorraine Hansberry is the youngest of four siblings. It is through her experiences growing up in Chicago and her family's political involvement and ties to organizations such as NAACP and the National Urban League, that Hansberry's own artristry and activism take root early on in her life. -
Hansberry leaves the University of Wisconsin at Madison and moves to New York
Hansberry becomes the first black student to live at Langdon Manor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, a predominately white school. Her years at Madison focus her political views and heighten her artistic sensiblities, and she moves to New York in 1950 to pursue "an education of another kind" (Wilkerson). -
Hansberry begins working and writing in Harlem
Upon moving to Harlem, Hansberry begins working on Freedom, a progressive newspaper founded by Paul Robeson, and in 1952 becomes associate editor. During this time, Hansberry begins to write. "Living and working in the midst of the rich and progressive social, political, and cultural elements of Harlem stimulated Hansberry to begin writing short stories, poetry, and plays" (Wilkerson). Through these experiences Hansberry meets her future husband and literary executor, Robert Barron Nemiroff. -
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Lorraine Hansberry's Career as Playwright
Although only two of Lorraine Hansberry's plays ever made it to the stage before her death, A Raisin in the Sun (1959) and The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window, (which was in production at the time of her early death in 1965), her contributions to not only theater but also to the black liberation movement are immense. Even after her death, Hansberry's reputation continued to grow as Nemiroff, who owned her papers, edited, published, and produced her work posthumously (Perkins). -
Hansberry marries Nemiroff, resigns position at Freedom to focus on writing.
After meeting Robert Barron Nemiroff, a student of Russian Jewish heritage attending NYU during Hansberry's involvement with Freedom, the two date and marry shortly after on June 20, 1953. Subsequently, Hansberry leaves Freedom staff to focus on her writing, working a series of jobs until she is able to quit working and focus on her writing full-time. It is during this timespan of three years that Hansberry begins writing The Crystal Stair, eventually titled A Raisin in the Sun. -
First Production of A Raisin in the Sun
A Raisin in the Sun opens at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on March 11,1959. A Raisin in the Sun quickly earns wide-spread recognition, and Lorraine Hansberry becomes the first black playwright, the youngest person, and only the fifth woman to win the New York Drama Critics Circle Award (Wilkerson). -
Cannes Festival Award for Hansberry's Film Adaptation of A Raisin in the Sun
The film adaptation of Hanberry's A Raisin in the Sun not only wins a Cannnes Festival Award, but is also nominated Best Screenplay. -
Raisin
In 1974, Nemiroff adapts Hansberry's award-winning play into a musical, Raisin, which wins a Tony Award. -
American Playhouse production for television of A Raisin in the Sun
Nerimoff restores scenes and dialogue cut from the original script of A Raisin in the Sun for its run at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. in 1987. With the 1989 American Playhouse production, A Raisin in the Sun is released in its entirety, unabridged for the first time since its initial production.
