Background Information of A Raisin in the Sun

Act I

Scene 1 A City Divided
While it is a great American city, Chicago had not had a great record for its treatment of African Americans.  In fact, some people claim that it is the most racially segregated city in the nation. The south Side, mostly inhabited by African Americans, had increasing problems with poverty, crime, and overcrowding through the 1950s and 1960s.  These problems were compounded as more and more white residents fled the inner city for the suburbs.  Riots sparked by the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1968 led to 11 deaths and millions of dollars in property damage. The election in 1983 of Harold Washington, Chicago’s first African American mayor, gave many African American Chicagoans renewed hope that they could participate in the political process and improve their lives.

Scene 2
Are You Assimilated?
When Joseph Asagai, An African, accused Beneatha of trying to assimilate into white society, he was expressing the feelings of millions of African Americans, who strongly believe that assimilation is a negation of the individual’s African identity and heritage. “Conking,” straightening naturally curly hair with lye and other chemicals, was a common practice for many African Americans. Also common was the use of skin crèmes designed to correct discoloration, but which had the effect of creating lighter skin tone.

With the civil rights movement of the 1950s and the black power movement of the late 1960s, more and more young Afro-Americans, as they called themselves then, refused to adopt white styles and wore African hair styles and fashions as a proud badge of their heritage.

Is There a Doctor in the House?
To become a doctor, Beneatha will have to go through years of training. First, she must complete four years of undergraduate study, concentrating on such subjects as biology and chemistry. Then she will have to go through four years of medical school. After graduating from medical school, she will have to serve at least a year as a hospital intern, working under the supervision of experienced doctors. Finally, to become a surgeon or other specialist, she would have to train a year or more as a hospital resident. Becoming a doctor requires intelligence, hard work, determination- and a lot of money!

Act II

Scene 1
The Great Empires of Western Africa

• The Ashanti are the largest and most influential ethnic group in Ghana. The Ashanti Empire, in the early 19th century, included much of Ghana, the eastern Ivory Coast, and western Togo.
• The Songhai Empire lasted nearly 800 years. It stretched from present day Nigeria to the Atlantic Coast. The Moroccans defeated the Songhai in 1591, bringing the long reign to an end.
• The Benin kingdom flourished from the 15th century to the mid-17th century. Its center of power was the forest region of today’s Nigeria. Its source of prosperity was trade with the Portuguese and others.
• The Bantu migrated from Cameroon into much of Central, Eastern, and Southern Africa by 1500. They established many Central African kingdoms that were later weakened by European colonial powers.

Scene 2
Nigeria-Asagai’s Homeland
Located on the western coast of Africa, Nigeria is the most populous of all African countries. Here are some facts about this fascinating country:

• Population: 127,879,000 (1992 est.)
• Size: about 1.3 times the size of Texas
• Economy: Based on oil production and agriculture
• Ethnic groups: 250 tribal groups. Yoruba (Asagai’s tribe) is the second-largest.
• Religion: Half the population is Muslim, and more than a third is Christian. Animism is also observed by the remainder of Nigerians, as well as by some Muslims and Christians.
• Language: Official language is English, but tribal languages include Yoruba, Ibo, and Hausa.
• Won independence from British: October 1, 1960

Act III Scene 1
“That’s My Man, Kenyatta!”
Walter’s admiration for Jomo Kenyatta (1890?-1978) is an understandable one. Jomo means “flaming spear,” which is what Walter calls himself in this scene. The first president of the east African nation of Kenya, Kenyatta was a major spokesman for African nationalism and helping lead the fight against British colonialism in his country. Under his leadership, Kenya which won its independence in 1963, progressed both politically and economically. Perhaps Kenyatta’s greatest legacy for the African continent was his attempt to unite a diverse population of Africans, Asians, and Europeans to work together for the common good of their country.

Who Was Prometheus?
George may have been joking when he called Walter “Prometheus,” but the name was not wholly unflattering. In Greek Mythology, Prometheus was an early god, one of the Titans. When Zeus, king of the gods, schemed to destroy humanity by denying them fire, Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to humans. For his “crime,” Prometheus was chained to a rock and his liver daily eaten by an eagle. Each night the liver grew back. He was finally freed from his ordeal by the hero Hercules, who killed the eagle and broke his chains.

Scene 2
Going to College
By the late 1950s, more and more young African Americans, like Beneatha and George, were going to college. Many attended African-American colleges and universities out of choice or because they were not welcomed at traditional white-run schools. One of the largest and most prestigious is Howard University in Washington, D.C. Howard was founded in 1867 by members of the First Congregational Society, who wanted to establish a school for formerly enslaved African Americans. The school was named for a Civil War general, Oliver Otis Howard. Two of Lorraine Hansberry’s uncles taught African history and sociology at Howard, and several other members of her family studied there.

Scene 3
Carl Hansberry, Hero
Lorraine Hansberry’s family, like the Youngers, had attempted to live in an all-white neighborhood when she was a child. Carl Hansberry, her crusading father, moved the family into a white neighborhood to challenge Chicago’s discriminatory housing laws. One night, a mob of angry white residents gathered on the family’s front lawn, and someone hurled a brick through the living room window. It barely missed striking nine-year-old Lorraine.

A suit filed by Carl Hansberry against the city was rejected by the state court, but the United States Supreme Court later ruled in his favor. Chicago’s politicians, however, managed to the skirt the law, and Chicago remained a largely segregated city. Disillusioned and bitter, Carl Hansberry bought a house in Mexico and was planning to relocate his family there when he died of a stroke in 1945.

Capital City
The reason that Bobo and Willie plan to go to Springfield “to spread money around” so they can get their liquor license is that Springfield is the capital city of Illinois. The city houses the state government and the officials and politicians wwho run it. Approximately 190 miles from Chicago, Springfield was home to Abraham Lincoln from 1837 to 1861. Imagine what “Honest Abe” would say to the idea that it’s a common practice to bribe state officials to get what you want.

Act Three

Hansberry’s Play About Slavery
Walter jokes bitterly about his family’s slave past in this act. Hansberry examined slavery in one of her least-known plays, The Drinking Gourd. The title refers to the Big Dipper constellation that led many runaway slaves north to freedom. The central character, Hiram Sweet, is a Southern slave holder who, despite the evil institution of which he is a part, is a decent man. Later in the play, Sweet falls ill. His villainous son who takes over blinds a young slave upon discovering he has learned to read. Still determined to be free, the slave is led north at night by his faithful girlfriend.

The Drinking Gourd was written for television to commemorate the centennial of the Civil War, but it was rejected by the networks for being too depressing and controversial. A little over a decade later, the dramatization of Alex Haley’s book Roots would prove the television executives wrong in their assessment that African Americans wanted only to forget slavery as a part of their past.

Asagai’s Future
As a playwright, Hansberry proved to be somewhat prophetic in this act. Asagai predicts that even after his country gains independence, there will be struggles. However, he believes those conflicts will be between black countrymen, not between the Nigerians and the British. Sadly, this prediction proved correct. During the years that followed Nigerian independence in 1960, several ethnic groups competed for political power. Nigeria has suffered a devastating civil war and numerous military takeovers of the government. As Asagai expected, there has been “retrogression…guns, murder, revolution.”

Integrating America- the Birth of the Civil Rights Movement
While African-American families like the Youngers were moving into white neighborhoods in the North, others were challenging segregation laws throughout the South. Some milestones in the civil rights movement are as follows:

• December 1955 – African-American seamstress Rosa Parks refuses to give up her bus seat to a white passenger. In response to her subsequent arrest, the African-American community staged a successful bus boycott.
• February 1960 – Four African-American college students in Greensboro, North Carolina, refused to leave a Woolworth’s lunch counter when a waitress would not serve them coffee. It became one of the movement’s fire nonviolent “sit-ins.”
• August 1963 – Dr. Martin Lutehr King, Jr., and other civil rights leader organized the “March on Washington,” the nation’s capital, that included over 200,000 people.

Lorraine Hansberry- Political Activist
Hansberry remained an active spokesperson for African-American equality and other worthy causes throughout her adult life.

Upon her arrival in New York City in the early 1950s, she participated in political rallies and demonstrations. She met her future husband, Robert Nemiroff, on a picket line at New York University.

After fame came with the success of A Raisin in the Sun, she appeared frequently on television and radio programs, expounding her views on civil rights and world peace.

In 1964, she wrote the text for a book of photographs about the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a civil rights organization. The book was called The Movement: Documentary of a Struggle for Equality.

On the road with a raisin in the sum-a letter to mom
Hotel Taft New Haven, Conn. January 19, 1959

Dear Mother,

Well-here we are. I am sitting alone in a nice hotel room in New Haven, Conn. Downstairs, next door in the Shubert Theater; technicians are putting the finishing touches on a living room that is supposed to be a Chicago living room….

The actors are very good and the director is a very talented man-so if it is a poor show I won’t be able to blame a soul but your youngest daughter.
Mama, it is a play that tells the truth about people, Negroes and life and I think it will help a lot of people to understand how we are just as complicated as they are-and just as mixed up-but above all, that we have among our miserable and downtrodden ranks-people who are the very essences of human dignity. That is what, after all the laughter and tears, the play is supposed to say. I hope it will make you very proud. See you soon. Love to all.

African-American Playwrights take the stage
No African-American writer had crossed over to mainstream success in the Broadway Theater before Lorraine Hansberry, but many of them had love the theater and written for it. Here are some examples:

Langston Hughes, best known today for his poetry, wrote numerous plays and even had his own theater company at one time.
Poet Countee Cullen’s last work was the book (written play or libretto) of the Broadway musical St. Louis Women.
James Baldwin, a good friend of Hansberry’s, wrote several plays in the 1960s, including the powerful indictment of racism, Blue for Mister Charlie.
Today, the African-American experience continues to be celebrated on stage in the stirring plays of August Wilson. Many of his works have been initially directed by Lloyd Richards, the man who brought A Raisin in the Sun to Broadway.