The Lorraine Hansberry Collection
Lorraine Hansberry’s collected works include published plays, books, and acting editions of her plays; articles and essays; and audio and video materials, including cast recordings, film and television productions, speeches, and radio and television interviews.
The Lorraine Hansberry Collection includes Hansberry’s plays, A Raisin in the Sun, The Sign In Sidney Brustein’s Window, Les Blancs, The Drinking Gourd, What Use Are Flowers?, To Be Young, Gifted and Black, and Raisin (The Musical).
In addition, several of Hansberry’s plays have been published in book form: A Raisin in the Sun, A Raisin in the Sun and The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, Les Blanc: The Collected Last Plays, To Be Young, Gifted, and Black, and A Raisin in the Sun: The Unfilmed Original Screenplay. Hansberry also worked on The Movement: Documentary of a Struggle for Equality (Simon & Schuster, 1964).
Audio works include the Lorraine Hansberry Audio Collection (A Raisin in the Sun, To Be Young, Gifted and Black, and Lorraine Hansberry Speaks Out: Art and the Black Revolution) and the audio recordings, A Raisin in the Sun (LA Theatre Works) and Raisin (CBS Records).
Video of performances of Hansbery’s plays include A Raisin in the Sun (1961, Columbia Pictures), A Raisin in the Sun (1988, PBS/American Playhouse), A Raisin in the Sun (2008, Sony/ ABC Television), and To Be Young, Gifted and Black.
Acting editions of the plays of A Raisin in the Sun, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, Les Blanc, and To Be Young Gifted and Black are published by Samuel French, Inc.
Hansberry also left written materials including playscripts, teleplays, screenplays; short stories, poems, and nonfiction writing including essays, lectures, speeches, and articles; photographs and artwork by and of Hansberry; and personal materials including diaries, journals, letters, autobiographical notes, and other ephemera. The unpublished materials are primarily collected in the Lorraine Hansberry Papers housed at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Additional information about Hansberry’s speeches and interviews can be found under Primary Sources.
The Lorraine Hansberry Literary Trust oversees, grants permissions, and licenses the works of Lorraine Hansberry. For more information about use of the Lorraine Hansberry Collection, please go to Licensing.