A Raisin In the Sun
Social Background
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Published in 1959, four
years after Rosa Parks’
was arrested for refusing
to give up her seat to a
white person on a bus,
sparking the Civil Rights
Movement, Hansberry’s
play illustrates black
America’s struggle to
gain equal access to
opportunity and
expression of cultural
identity.
Sentiments in A Raisin… will be echoed by
MLK in later speeches, marches, and rallies
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Civil-Rights Leader
1929-1968
I have a dream… a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
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.’
Cont’d dreams represented in the play and later
echoed by King
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I have a dream that my
four 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.
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I have a dream…where
little black boys and
black girls will be able
to join hands with little
white boys and white
girls and walk together
as sisters and brothers.
In 1956, King leads a boycott of
the bus laws.
In 1954, the Supreme Court found in favor of the plaintiffs in the Brown v.
The Board of Education case. However, the segregation of schools didn’t
begin to take effect until 1957. Moreover, the case’s decision did not
abolish segregation in other public areas, such as restaurants and
restrooms.
Integration and Segregation in
the United States: Chronology
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1861-65 Civil War years.
1866 Ku Klux Klan established in Tennessee.
1870 Passage of Fifteenth Amendment to U.S. Constitution prohibiting racial
discrimination in voting.
1882 Chinese Exclusionary Act banning Chinese immigration to the United
States for ten years.
1896 Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision permitting "separate but
equal” public racial facilities.
1907 Supreme Court declares that railroads have the right to segregate
passengers.
1909 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
founded.
1911 National Urban League founded.
1919 Race riots in Chicago.
1924 Immigration Act establishing quotas based on national origin.
Integration and Segregation
in the United States:
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1927 Urban League organizes boycott of stores refusing to hire blacks
1943 Race riots in Detroit.
1946 Supreme Court declares that segregation on buses is
unconstitutional.
1947 Jackie Robinson becomes first African American to play major
league baseball.
1948 President Truman issues executive order integrating armed forces.
1949 Supreme Court rules that local "covenants" enforcing segregated
neighborhoods are unconstitutional. National Housing Act addressing
substandard housing.
1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling that "separate
but equal“ doctrine regarding school segregation is unconstitutional.
1955 Bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama.
1957 School desegregation crisis in Little Rock, Arkansas.
1960 "Sit-ins" begin at Woolworth's in Greensboro, North Carolina.
1961 "Freedom Riders" attempt to force integration in Alabama.
1962 African American student James Meridith is denied admission to the
University of Mississippi, resulting in contempt charges against the
governor of Mississippi.
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1963 George Wallace's "school house stand" attempting to
block integration of theUniversity of Alabama.
Martin Luther King Jr. arrested in Birmingham, Alabama,
while leading civil rights demonstrations.
March on Washington, D.C., demonstrating for civil rights.
1964 Martin Luther King, Jr. wins the Nobel Peace Prize.
Race riots in Harlem.
1965 Malcolm X assassinated.
Martin Luther King Jr. leads march from Selma to
Montgomery, Alabama.
Race riots in Watts, Los Angeles.
Immigration law abolishes quota system. Voting Rights Bill
passed.
1967 Black Power conference held in Newark, New Jersey.
Race riots in Cleveland, Newark, and Detroit.
1968 Civil Rights Act of 1968 guaranteeing fair treatment in
housing.
Martin Luther King Jr. assasinated.
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World of the 1950s
• Population: 151,684,000 (U.S. Dept. of
Commerce, Bureau of the Census)
• Unemployed: 3,288,000
• Life expectancy: Women 71.1, men
65.6
• Car Sales: 6,665,800
• Average Salary: $2,992
• Labor Force male/female: 5/2
• Cost of a loaf of bread: $0.14
• Bomb shelter plans, like the government
pamphlet You Can Survive, become
widely available
Hansberry’s Background
1930-1965
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A Raisin…is the 1st play by a black
woman to be produced on
Broadway
Other Works:
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WHAT USE ARE FLOWERS?
THE MOVEMENT: DOCUMENTARY OF A
STRUGGLE FOR EQUALITY,
THE SIGN IN SIDNEY BRUSTEIN'
WINDOWTO BE YOUNG, GIFTED, AND
BLACK:
LES BLANCS: THE COLLECTED LAST
PLAYS: The Drinking Gourd / What Use
Are Flowers?
A Note on the Title
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Lorraine Hansberry took the title of A Raisin in
the Sun from a line in Langston Hughes’s
famous 1951 poem “Harlem.”
“Harlem” captures the tension between the need
for black expression and the impossibility of that
expression because of American society’s
oppression of its black population.
In the poem, Hughes asks whether a “dream
deferred”—a dream put on hold—withers up “like
a raisin in the sun.”
More on the title
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His lines confront the racist and
dehumanizing attitude prevalent in American
society before the civil rights movement of
the 1960s.
Hansberry’s reference to Hughes’s poem in
her play’s title highlights the importance of
dreams in A Raisin in the Sun and the
struggle that her characters face to realize
their individual dreams, a struggle tied to
the more fundamental black dream of
equality in America.
The novel
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A Raisin in the Sun can be considered a turning
point in American art because it addresses so
many issues important during the 1950s in the
United States.
The stereotype of 1950s America as a land of
happy housewives and blacks content with their
inferior status resulted in an uprising of social
resentment that would finally find public voice
in the civil rights and feminist movements of
the 1960s.
Character List
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Walter Lee Younger - The
protagonist of the play. He
wants to be rich; wants to
invest his father’s insurance
money in a new liquor store
venture.
Lena Younger (“Mama”) religious, moral, and
maternal. She wants to use
her husband’s insurance
money as a down payment
on a house with a backyard
to fulfill her dream for her
family to move up in
the world.
More characters
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Beneatha Younger (“Bennie”) Beneatha is twenty years old, she attends
college, and is better educated than the
rest of the Younger family. She dreams
of being a doctor and struggles to
determine her identity as a well-educated black
woman.
Ruth Younger Walter’s wife and Travis’s mother. Ruth
takes care of the Youngers’ small
apartment. She is about thirty, but her
weariness makes her seem older.
Characters cont.
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Travis Younger - Walter and
Ruth’s sheltered young son.
Travis earns some money by
carrying grocery bags and
likes to play outside with other
neighborhood children, but he
has no bedroom and sleeps on
the living-room sofa.
Joseph Asagai - A Nigerian student in love with Beneatha. Asagai,
as he is often called, is very proud of his African heritage, and
Beneatha hopes to learn about her African heritage from him.
Even more characters
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George Murchison - A wealthy, AfricanAmerican man who dates Beneatha. The
Youngers approve of George, but Beneatha
dislikes his willingness to submit to white
culture and forget his African heritage.
Mr. Karl Lindner - The only white character in
the play. He offers the Youngers a deal to
reconsider moving into his (all-white)
neighborhood.
Mrs. Johnson - The Youngers’ neighbor; warns
them about moving into a predominately
white neighborhood.
Themes
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A Raisin in the Sun is essentially about dreams, as
the main characters struggle to deal with the
oppressive circumstances that rule their lives.
Every member of the Younger family has a separate,
individual dream—Beneatha wants to become a
doctor, for example, and Walter wants to have
money so that he can afford things for his family.
The Youngers struggle to attain these dreams
throughout the play, and much of their happiness
and depression is directly related to their attainment
of, or failure to attain, these dreams.
The Need to Fight Racial
Discrimination
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The character of Mr. Lindner
makes the theme of racial
discrimination prominent in the
plot as an issue that the
Youngers cannot avoid.
Mr. Lindner and the people he
represents can only see the color
of the Younger family’s skin,
Ultimately, the Youngers respond
to this discrimination with
defiance and strength.
Restrictive Covenants
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In the 1948 Shelley v. Kraemer decision,
the United States Supreme Court found
the use of racially restrictive covenants
illegal. They were clauses in deeds for
real estate sales that were created to
preserve the architectural or social
homogeneity of a neighborhood.
Restrictive covenants could limit
anything from hanging laundry outside
to the sale or rental of homes to
nonwhites.
Restrictive Covenants
Continued
In 1941, a half-mile-long
concrete wall was erected to
separate an AfricanAmerican neighborhood
in Detroit from the white
section. In that city, by 1947
over 80 percent of property outside of the
inner city had racially restrictive stipulations.
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The Importance of
Family
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The Youngers struggle socially and
economically throughout the play but unite
in the end to realize their dream of buying a
house.
Mama strongly believes in the importance of
family, and she tries to teach this value to
her family as she struggles to keep them
together and functioning.
Walter and Beneatha learn this lesson about
family at the end of the play.
Setting: The Home
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The Younger apartment is the only setting
throughout the play, emphasizing the
centrality of the home.
The home is a galvanizing force for the
family, one that Mama sees as crucial to
the family’s unity.
The play ends, fittingly, when Mama,
lagging behind, finally leaves the
apartment.
Crowded Quarters
The housing crunch in
Northern cities, along
with the segregation
and discrimination
facing African
Americans attempting to
find places to live, led to
extremely crowded
conditions, such as
those pictured in this
Chicago residence in
1941.
Symbols
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“Eat Your Eggs”
Being quiet and eating one’s eggs represents an
acceptance of the adversity that Walter and the rest
of the Youngers face in life. Walter believes that
Ruth, who is making his eggs, keeps him from
achieving his dream, and he argues that she should
be more supportive of him. The eggs she makes
every day symbolize her mechanical approach to
supporting him. She provides him with nourishment,
but always in the same, predictable way.
Mama’s Plant
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The most overt symbol in the play,
Mama’s plant represents both Mama’s
care and her dream for her family.
The plant also symbolizes her dream
to own a house and, more specifically,
to have a garden and a yard
Beneatha’s Hair
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When the play begins, Beneatha
has straightened hair. Midway
through the play, after Asagai visits
her and questions her hairstyle, she
cuts her Caucasian-seeming hair.
Her new, radical afro represents her
embracing of her heritage.
This prefigures the 1960s cultural
credo that black is beautiful.
Journal
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Describe a dream or goal that you
have. Discuss what obstacles might
stand in your way? What are you
willing to sacrifice in order to obtain
this goal?