On March 11, 1959, Lorraine Vivian Hansberry had her captive audience. During a time when African-Americans were portrayed in musicals as jovial resilient characters who were content with their status, A Raisin in the Sun emerged as the first drama written and produced by an African-American that challenged this myth of contentment. If we ever destroy the image of the black people who supposedly do find those things tolerable in America, then that much-touted "guilt" which allegedly haunts most middle-class white Americans with regard to the Negro question would really become unendurable.Ĭombating the myth of complacency is the central idea that drives Hansberry's play. In an almost paradoxical fashion, it disturbs the soul of man to truly understand what he invariably senses: that nobody really finds oppression and/or poverty tolerable. Lorraine Hansberry, in an August 1959 Village Voice article, wrote:
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