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Primary Resources

Primary Resources

In addition to her published plays, Lorraine Hansberry left a rich archive of materials, including plays, screenplays, and teleplays; unfinished novels; and articles, essays, lectures, speeches, interviews, and poems. Below you will find a list of Hansberry's published materials: Plays; Articles & Essays; Articles & Essays: from Freedom; Letters; Poetry & Fiction; and Speeches. You can also find excerpts from her published material in our archive of Hansberry quotes, In Her Own Words. The unpublished materials—including materials relating to Hansberry's activism as well as diaries, journals, and personal correspondence—are primarily collected in the Lorraine Hansberry Papers housed at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Artwork by Hansberry can be found in the Gallery. More information about Hansberry's published plays can be found under Works.

Plays

Hansberry, Lorraine. “The Drinking Gourd.” In Voices of Man Literature Series: The Drinking Gourd, edited by 
Vincent L. Medeiros and Diana B. Boettcher. MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1969.

Hansberry, Lorraine. Les Blancs: A Drama in Two Acts. Final text adapted by Robert Nemiroff; script associate, Charlotte Zaltzberg. Acting Edition. New York: Samuel French, Inc., 1972.

Hansberry, Lorraine. Les Blancs: The Collected Last Plays. Includes The Drinking Gourd and What Use are Flowers? Edited, with critical background by Robert Nemiroff. With a Foreword by Jewell Handy Gresham Nemiroff and an Introduction by Margaret B. Wilkerson. Edition. New York: Vintage Books, 1994.

Hansberry, Lorraine. Les Blancs: The Collected Last Plays. Includes The Drinking Gourd and What Use are Flowers? Edited, with critical background by Robert Nemiroff. With an Introduction by Julius Lester. First edition. New York: Random House, 1972.

Hansberry, Lorraine. Lorraine Hansberry: A Raisin in the Sun. 1969 full cast recording with Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, Steve Mitchell, Diana Sands, Claudia McNeil, Zakes Mokae, Harold Scott, Sam Schacht, and Leonard Jackson. Caedmon Records: (TRS342, 1971).

Hansberry, Lorraine. Lorraine Hansberry: To Be Young Gifted and Black. 1972 full cast recording with James Earl Jones, Camille Yarborough, John Towey, Barbara Baxley, Garn Stephens, Claudia McNeil, and Tina Sattin. Caedmon Records: (TRS342, 1971).

Hansberry, Lorraine. Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun. Thirtieth Anniversary Edition (Revised). Acting Edition. New York: Samuel French, Inc., 1988.

Hansberry, Lorraine. Lorraine Hansberry’s Original Play: A Raisin in the Sun, A Drama in Three Acts. Acting edition. New York: Samuel French, Inc., 1958.

Hansberry, Lorraine. The Movement: Documentary of a Struggle for Equality. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1964.

Hansberry, Lorraine. The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window: A Drama in Two Acts, Revised Stage Edition. Acting Edition. New York: Samuel French, Inc., 1993.

Hansberry, Lorraine. The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window. With a Foreword by John Braine and an Introduction by Robert Nemiroff. New York: Random House, 1965.

Hansberry, Lorraine. To Be Young Gifted and Black: A Portrait of Lorraine Hansberry in Her Own Words, adapted by Robert Nemiroff. Acting Edition. New York: Samuel French, Inc., 1999.

Hansberry, Lorraine. To Be Young Gifted and Black: Lorraine Hansberry in Her Own Words, adapted by Robert Nemiroff. With drawings and art by Lorraine Hansberry, an Introduction by James Baldwin, and a new Preface by Jewell Handy Gresham Nemiroff. New York: Vintage Books, 1995.

Hansberry, Lorraine. A Raisin in the Sun. With an introduction by Robert Nemiroff. New York: Vintage Books, 1994.

Hansberry, Lorraine. A Raisin in the Sun and The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, edited by Robert Nemiroff. With a new Foreword by Jewell Handy Gresham-Nemiroff, a Note by Robert Nemiroff, and critical Essays by Amiri Baraka and Frank Rich. New York: Vintage Books, 1995.

Hansberry, Lorraine. A Raisin in the SunThe Unfilmed Original Screenplay, edited by Robert Nemiroff. With a Foreword by Jewell Handy Gresham-Nemiroff, an Introduction by Margaret Wilkerson and with a Commentary by Spike Lee. New York: Signet, 1995.

Articles & Essays

Hansberry, Lorraine. “A Medal for Willie.” Review of play by William Branch. Masses & Mainstream. Vol. 4 No. 12. (December, 1952): 59–60.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “About Billie Holiday.” New York Post, July 27, 1959.           

Hansberry, Lorraine. “Amen.” The Village Voice, 1959.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “An Author’s Reflection: Willie Loman, Walter Lee, and He Who Must Live.” The Village Voice, August 12, 1959.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “The Black Revolution and the White Backlash.” In Black Protest: History, Documents, and Analysis, 1619 to the Present, edited by Joanne Grant. New York: Fawcett Premier, 1968.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “The Budget.” Written under the name Emily Jones. One Magazine Vol. 6 No. 3 (March 1958).

Hansberry, Lorraine. “The Case of the Invisible Force: Images of the Negro in Hollywood Films.” Composite from articles originally published in New Foundations magazine in 1951 and 1952. Reprinted in Celluloid Power: Social Film Criticism from Birth of a Nation to Judgment at Nuremburg, edited by David Platt, 457–467. Metuchen: Scarecrow Press, 1992.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “A Challenge to Artists.” Freedomways Vol. 3 No. 1 (1963): 33–35; reprinted in Voice of Black America: Major Speeches by Negroes in the United States 1797–1971. Edited by Phillip S. Foner, 954–959. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “Congolese Patriot.” New York Times Magazine, March 26, 1961.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “A Destiny in the Stars.” Excerpt from “Negro Writer And His Roots,” originally printed in Crisis, 1969 and reprinted as “The Negro Writer And His Roots: Toward A New Romanticism.” The Black Scholar Vol. 12 No. 2. (March/April 1981): 2–12.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “Epilogue.” Album liner notes to Poems From James Weldon Johnson’s God’s Trombones. Smithsonian Folkways Records. Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage: FW09788/FL 9788 (1965).

Hansberry, Lorraine. “Five Writers & their African Ancestors.” Hansberry statements as quoted by Harold R. Isaacs, “Five Writers and Their African Ancestors, Part II,” Phylon Vol. 21 No. 4 (1960): 317–336.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “Images & Essences: 1961 Dialogue with an Uncolored Egghead Containing Wholesome Intentions and Some Sass.” Urbanite (May 1961): 10–11, 36.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “In Defense of Equality of Men.” Written in 1961 and published in The Nation: Anthology Of Literature By Women, edited by Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, 2056–68. New York: Norton, 1985.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “Interview with Lorraine Hansberry by Studs Terkel.” Radio interview with Studs Terkel, broadcast on WFMT Radio, Chicago, Illinois, May 12, 1959. Transcript reprinted in “Make New Sounds: Studs Terkel Interviews Lorraine Hansberry.” American Theater (November 1984): 6.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “The Legacy of W.E.B. Dubois.” Freedomways 5 (Winter 1965): 19–20. Reprinted in Black Titan: W. E. B. DuBois, an Anthology by the Editors of Freedomways, edited by Esther Jackson, John Henrik Clarke, Ernest Kaiser, and J.H. O’Dell, 17. Boston: Beacon Press, 1970.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “Me Tink Me Hear Sounds In De Night.” Theater Arts. (October 1960): 9–11.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “The Negro Writer and His Roots: Towards a New Position.” Originally printed as “A Destiny is in the Stars” in Crisis, 1969 and reprinted in The Black Scholar, Vol. 12 No. 2. (March/April 1981): 2–12.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “On Summer.” Playbill, June 27, 1960.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “Original Prospectus for the John Brown Memorial Theatre of Harlem.” The Black Scholar (July–August 1979).

Hansberry, Lorraine. “Poetry of the Negro.” Album liner notes for Anthology of Negro Poets in the USA: 200 Years. Read by Arna Bontemps, with selections from The Poetry of the Negro, 1746–1949, edited by Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps. NY: Doubleday and Co.: 1949. Smithsonian Folkways Records. Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage: FW09792 / FL 9792 (1955).

Hansberry, Lorraine. “Quo Vadis.” Statements by William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Lorraine Hansberry, Norman Podhoretz, and others on their hopes for the 1960s. Mademoiselle, January 17, 1960.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “The Shakespearean Experience.” Show Magazine Vol. 4 No. 2. (1964).

Hansberry, Lorraine. “Simone De Beauvoir and the Second Sex: An American Commentary, an Unfinished Essay-in-Progress.” In Words of Fire: An Anthology of African-American Feminist Thought, edited by Beverly Guy-Sheftal, 128–142. New York: New Press, 1995.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “Stanley Gleason and the Lights that Must Not Die.” New York Times, January 17, 1960.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “Strange Flower.” Liberation (May 1959): 14.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “This Complex of Womanhood.” Ebony Magazine. Vol. 18 No. 11 (August 1960): 88.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “Thoughts On Genet, Mailer, and the New Paternalism.” The Village Voice, June 1, 1961.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “Toussaint: Excerpt from Act I of a Work in Progress (1961).” In Nine Plays by Black Women, edited by Margaret Wilkerson. NY: New American Library, 1986.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “Tribute.” In Black Titan: W. E. B. DuBois, an Anthology by the Editors of Freedomways, edited by Esther Jackson, John Henrik Clarke, Ernest Kaiser, and J.H. O’Dell, 17. Boston: Beacon Press, 1970.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “Village Intellect Revealed.” New York Times, October 31, 1964.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “We Have So Much To Say.” Transcript of interview with Ted Poston. New York Post. March 22, 1959.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “We Want Our Part In Full Measure, That Is All.” Excerpt from Merriman Letters in Everyman Vol. 34 No. 1 (1965).

Hansberry, Lorraine. “What Could Happen Didn’t.” New York Herald Tribune, March 26, 1961.

Hansberry, Lorraine. We Are of the Same Sidewalks. Forward to gallery brochure, Charles White Exhibit, ACA Gallery (1961). Published in Freedomways 20 (Winter 1980): 198.

Articles & Essays: from Freedom

Hansberry, Lorraine and Stan Steiner, “Cry for Colonial Freedom Jolts Phony Youth Meet.” Freedom, (September 1951): 6.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “CNA Presents Exciting New Dramatic Revue: Gold Through the Trees.” Freedom (May 1952): 7

Hansberry, Lorraine. “Egyptian People Fight for Freedom.” Freedom (March 1952): 3.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “Gold Coast Rulers Go: Ghana Moves to Freedom.” Freedom (December 1951).

Hansberry, Lorraine. “Harlem Children Face Mass Ignorance in Old, Overcrowded, Understaffed Schools,” Freedom (November 1952): 3.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “Illegal Conference Shows Peace is Key to Freedom.” Freedom (April 1952): 3.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “Juvenile Delinquency? Child Labor is Society’s Crime against Youth,” Freedom (February 1955): 2

Hansberry, Lorraine. “Kenya’s Kikuyu: A Peaceful People Wage Heroic Struggle against British,” Freedom (December 1952): 3.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “Life Challenges Negro Youth.” Freedom (March 1955).

Hansberry, Lorraine. “Medal for Willie Deserves a Medal.” Freedom (November 1951).

Hansberry, Lorraine. “Negroes Cast in Same Old Roles in TV shows.” Freedom (June 1951): 7.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “Noted Lawyer Goes to Jail: Says Negroes Fight for Rights Menaced.” Freedom (May 1952): 3.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “Old Timers’ Eyes Grow Misty Recalling Florence Mills.” Freedom (July 1952): 7

Hansberry, Lorraine. “Songs of Clarence Williams Inspire Today’s Musicians.” Freedom. Vol. 2 No. 8 (August, 1952): 7.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “Student Killing Exposes NYU Bias.” Freedom. Vol. 2 No. 6 (June 1952): 5.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “The Outsider.” Freedom (April 1953): 7.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “Trespass by Eugene Brown.” Book review. Freedom. Vol. 5 No. 85 (March 1955): 11.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “Women Voice Demands in Capital Sojourn.” Freedom. (October 1951): 6.

Letters

Hansberry, Lorraine. “Miss Hansberry on ‘Backlash.’” Letters to Editor. The Village Voice, July 23, 1964.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “Letter to Editor.” Negro Digest, 1962.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “Letter to Editor.” New York Post, 1959.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “Letter to Editor.” The Theatre, 1959.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “Letter to Editor.” Time Magazine, 1964.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “Letter to the Editor From Lorraine Hansberry.” In response to the February, 1963 Norman Podhoretz article, “My Negro Problem and Yours.” Commentary. March 15,1963.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “Letter to the Editor.” Unpublished letter to The Reporter magazine (April 23, 1954).

Hansberry, Lorraine. “Mailbag: O’Casey-Hansberry.” New York Times, June 28, 1959.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “On Arthur Miller, Marilyn Monroe, And ‘Guilt.’” Letter to a friend in 1963; excerpt published in Women In Theatre: Compassion And Hope, edited by Karen Malpede, 173–176. New York: Drama Book Publishers, 1983.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “On Strindberg And Sexism.” Originally published as a letter to the Village Voice in February, 1956. Reprinted in Women In Theatre: Compassion And Hope, edited by Karen Malpede, 173–176. New York: Drama Book Publishers, 1983.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “On Trumpets Of The Lord.” Letter reprinted in Robert Nemiroff, “A Critical Background.” In Les Blancs: The Collected Last Plays. Includes The Drinking Gourd and What Use are Flowers? Edited, with critical background, by Robert Nemiroff. With an Introduction by Julius Lester. First edition. New York: Random House, 1972.

Hansberry, Lorraine. Letter, signed LHN, originally published in The Ladder Vol. 1 No. 8 (May 1957). Reprinted in The Ladder Vol. I and II. Introduction by Barbara Grier (Gene Damon, pseudonym). NY: Arno Press, 1975.

Hansberry, Lorraine. Letter, signed LN originally published in The Ladder Vol. 1 No. 11 (Aug 1957). Reprinted in The Ladder Vol. I and II. Introduction by Barbara Grier (Gene Damon, pseudonym. NY: Arno Press, 1975.

Hansberry, Lorraine. Letters, “Two Letters To Dr. Dubois.” In The Correspondence Of W.E.B Dubois, Vol. III: Selections, 1944–1963, edited by Herbert Aptheker. Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 1997.

Hansberry, Lorraine. Letter, unpublished (unmailed), to the editor, “On Homophobia, The Intellectual Impoverishment of Women and a Homosexual ‘Bill of Rights.’ ONE Magazine.  April 18, 1961. As cited in Carter, Steven R. Hansberry’s Drama: Commitment and Complexity. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991, 6-7.

Poetry & Fiction

Hansberry, Lorraine. “All The Dark And Beautiful Warriors.” Excerpt in The Village Voice, August 16, 1983.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “All The Dark And Beautiful Warriors.” Excerpt in a special issue of TriQuarterly 60, Spring/Summer (1984).

Hansberry, Lorraine. “Anticipation The Anticipation Of Eve.” Written under the name Emily Jones. ONE Magazine Vol. 6 No. 12. (December 1958).

Hansberry, Lorraine. “The Buck Williams Tennessee Memorial Association.” An excerpt from the unpublished novel, All The Dark and Beautiful Warriors. Southern Exposure Vol. 12 No. 5 (l984): 28–3l.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “Chanson Du Konallis.” Written under the name Emily Jones. The Ladder, Vol. 2 No. 12. (September 1958).

Hansberry, Lorraine. “Flag From A Kitchenette Window.” Masses & Mainstream Vol. 3 No. 9 (1950).

Hansberry, Lorraine. “Renascence.” Written under the name Emily Jones. ONE Magazine Vol. 6 (December 1958).

Hansberry, Lorraine “Lynch Song” Masses & Mainstream Vol. 4 No. 7 (July 1951).

Hansberry, Lorraine. “A Medal For Willie.” Masses & Mainstream Vol. 4 No. 12 (1951).

Hansberry, Lorraine. “Three Songs For The ‘New World’: Three Hundred Years Later, Ocomogosiay! and To Ghana Off The Top Of My Head.” The Black Collegian Vol. 3 No. 4 (1984).

Speeches

Hansberry, Lorraine. “…Beauty of Things Black—Towards Total Liberation.” An interview with Mike Wallace on May 8, 1959. 21:34. Lorraine Hansberry Speaks Out: Art and the Black Revolution. Harper Audio/Caedmon: Abridged edition (April 2009).

Hansberry, Lorraine. “The Black Revolution and the White Backlash.” From the Town Hall forum with Imamu Baraka, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, John O. Killens, Paule Marshall, Charles Silberman, David Susskind, and James Weschler on June 15, 1964. 10:46. Lorraine Hansberry Speaks Out: Art and the Black Revolution. Harper Audio/Caedmon: Abridged edition (April 2009).

Hansberry, Lorraine. “The Black Revolution and the White Backlash.” Transcript of Town Hall Forum, “The Black Revolution and the White Backlash” on June 15, 1964 in NYC sponsored by The Association of Artists for Freedom. Originally printed in National Guardian, July 4, 1964. Reprinted in Say It Loud: Great Speeches on Civil Rights and African American Identity edited by Catherine Ellis and Stephen Drury Smith. Includes CD. NY: New Press, 2010.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “A Challenge to Artists.” Freedomways Vol. 3 No. 1 (1963): 33–35; reprinted in Voice of Black America: Major Speeches by Negroes in the United States 1797–1971. Edited by Phillip S. Foner, 954–959. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “…Integration into a Burning House.” From the WBAI NYC radio symposium on “The Negro Writer in America” on January 1, 1961; two excerpts from a Civil War Centennial program that included James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Nat Hentoff, Alfred Kazin, and Emile Capouya. 4:49. Lorraine Hansberry Speaks Out: Art and the Black Revolution. Harper Audio/Caedmon: Abridged edition (April 2009).

Hansberry, Lorraine. Lorraine Hansberry Speaks Out: Art and The Black Revolution. A collection of seven interviews and speeches recorded between 1959 and 1964. Caedmon Records (TC 1352, 1972).

Hansberry, Lorraine. The Lorraine Hansberry Audio Collection. Includes full cast productions of the 1969 recording of A Raisin in the Sun and 1972 recording of To Be Young, Gifted, and Black. The final selection is Lorraine Hansberry Speaks Out, a collection of seven interviews and speeches recorded between 1959 and 1964. 6 hours. Harper Audio/Caedmon: Abridged edition (April 2009).

Hansberry, Lorraine. “…My Government is Wrong.” From a speech to abolish the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, Manhattan Center on October 25, 1962. 6:13. Lorraine Hansberry Speaks Out: Art and the Black Revolution. Harper Audio/Caedmon: Abridged edition (April 2009).

Hansberry, Lorraine. “My Name Is Lorraine Hansberry. I Am a Writer.” Excerpt of speech, published in Esquire (November, 1969): 139–141.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “The Nation Needs Your Gifts.” Speech to Readers Digest/United Negro College Fund creative writing contest winners, NYC, May 1, 1964. Reprinted in Negro Digest 13 (August 1964): 26–29.

Hansberry, Lorraine. The Negro Writer in America. Recorded in 1961 from a WBAI radio symposium, originally titled “The Negro’s Role in American Culture.” Cross-Currents Vol. 1 No. 3 (Summer 1961): 205–224.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “Origins of Character.” Address to the American Academy of Psychotherapists on October 5, 1963; reprinted as “Playwriting: Creative Constructiveness” in Annals of Psychotherapy (Monograph No. 8: The Creative Use of the Unconscious by the Artist and the Psychotherapist). Edited by Jules Barron and Renee Nell. Vol. 5 No. 1 (1964): 14.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “…To Reclaim the African Past.” Excerpt from a radio interview with Studs Terkel on May 12, 1959. 4:10. Lorraine Hansberry Speaks Out: Art and the Black Revolution. Harper Audio/Caedmon: Abridged edition (April 2009).

Hansberry, Lorraine. “The Scars of the Ghetto.” Speech on May 13, 1964 to the Monthly Review 15th Anniversary Committee campaign to raise money to send MR Press books to Negro college libraries. Originally printed in Monthly Review, Vol. 16 No. 10 (1965). Reprinted in Monthly Review Vol. 4 No. 3 (1989): 52–55.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “Ten Years Later—What Now?” Speech reprinted as article in Jewish Currents, (July–August 1964): 6–7.

Hansberry, Lorraine. “…Towards a New Black Leadership.” Speech on the 15th Anniversary of The Monthly Review, May 15, 1964. 8:18 Lorraine Hansberry Speaks Out: Art and the Black Revolution. Harper Audio/Caedmon: Abridged edition (April 2009).

Hansberry, Lorraine. “…We are One People!” Remarks to a civil rights rally, Croton-on-Hudson on June 16, 1963. 4:16. Lorraine Hansberry Speaks Out: Art and the Black Revolution. Harper Audio/Caedmon: Abridged edition (April 2009).