Lorraine Hansberry

Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965) was an American playwright and author who was the first black woman to write a play to be performed on Broadway, and was the youngest American playwright to win the Best American Play Award from the New York Drama Critics’ Circle. Her best-known work, A Raisin in the Sun, highlights the lives of black Americans living under segregation in Chicago. She died of cancer at age 34.