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03.11.2021

On the 62nd anniversary of the Broadway premiere of Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun,” Cornell West and Tricia Rose reflect on the Black literary tradition as they focus on the legacies of Lorraine Hansberry and Gwendolyn Brooks as revolutionaries and exemplars who are often misunderstood as the “darlings of the white liberal establishment.”

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03.11.2021

Debuting in July 2020, professors Cornel West and Tricia Rose navigate the balance between hope and uncertainty in their weekly program, The Tight Rope.

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image of a Black person on whose face is written Les Blancs/The Whites
07.06.2020

Joi Gresham, director of the Lorraine Hansberry Literary Trust, introduces the life and work of American playwright Lorraine Hansberry, in relation to her final play, Les Blancs.

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A Black man;s face with the words— Les Blancs The Whites— witten on his face in white paint.
07.02.2020

Les Blancs by Lorraine Hansberry will be streaming for free courtesy of the UK’s National Theatre at Home beginning on Thursday July 2, 2020 at 7:00pm UK time (2:00pm EST, 11:00am PST).

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Solidarity to Prisoners image of several black birds tearing down a wire fence; from the Dreaming Freedom | Practicing Abolition website.
07.02.2019

Stevie Wilson, a Black, queer, writer, activist, and student incarcerated in Pennsylvania, is the coordinator of, and participant in, a network of self-organized prisoner abolitionist study groups at SCI-Smithfield. On the website of the four study crews, Dreaming Freedom | Practicing Abolition, Stevie recalls a scene from Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun in his essay, “Doing Abolition.

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05.28.2019

The Harvard University Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard (DASH) has made Robin Bernstein’s 1999 article, Inventing a Fishbowl: White Supremacy and the Critical Reception of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun available to the public. You can access and download the article here.

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American Masters Award
03.30.2019

Last night Tracy Strain was awarded an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Directing in a Motion Picture (Television), adding to the recognition of the documentary, Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart that aired on PBS in January 2018.

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Lorraine Hansberry: Reimagining Biography: drawing by Hansberry with text below: March 22, 2018, Schomburg Center, NYC. Panel conversation with Margaret Wilkerson, Imani Perry, Soyica Colbert, Tracy Heather Strain. Moderated by Joy-Ann Reid.
03.21.2018

On March 22, 2018, the Lorraine Hansberry Literary Trust and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture will co-present Lorraine Hansberry: Reimagining BiographyIn addition to the AMERICAN MASTERS documentary, Sighted Eyes|Feeling Heart, that aired on PBS in January 2018, three biographical treatments of the artist, activist, and public intellectual will be published in the next several years. Reimagining Biography panelists will be asked to address the feminisms, intersectionalities, political, and private-public voicings that shaped Hansberry’s life and her understanding of herself and the worlds she both lived in and created.

In 2010 the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture published an article, “Young, Gifted, Black, and Complicated: The Question of Lorraine Hansberry’s Legacy,” in their newsletter, Africana Heritage. In that article, Steven G. Fullwood, then Assistant Curator, Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture puts the incredible legacy of Lorraine Hansberry’s contribution as an artist, activist, public intellectual, and writer into context.

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Lorraine Hansberry: Reimagining Biography: drawing by Hansberry with text below: March 22, 2018, Schomburg Center, NYC. Panel conversation with Margaret Wilkerson, Imani Perry, Soyica Colbert, Tracy Heather Strain. Moderated by Joy-Ann Reid.
03.21.2018

On Thursday, March 22, 2018, the Lorraine Hansberry Literary Trust and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture   will co-present Lorraine Hansberry: Reimagining Biography. In addition to the AMERICAN MASTERS documentary, Sighted Eyes|Feeling Heart, three biographical treatments of the artist, activist, and public intellectual will be published in the next several years. The four panelists will share how they navigated the feminisms, intersectionalities, political, and private-public voicings that shaped Hansberry’s life in their biographical treatments of the artist, activist, and public intellectual.

Over the last two weeks we have been sharing information about the panel participants as well as information about the Lorraine Hansberry Papers, held at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library.

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