Looking for Lorraine
Page 25
27. Nemiroff, To Be Young, Gifted and Black, 148.
28. Jane Howard, “Doom and Glory of Knowing Who You Are,” Life, May 24, 1963, 89.
29. “Diary,” Hansberry Papers, box 1, file 1.
30. Ibid.
CHAPTER EIGHT: OF THE FAITH OF OUR FATHERS
1. Nemiroff, To Be Young, Gifted and Black, 20.
2. James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son (orig. 1955; Boston: Beacon Press, 1984), 85.
3. “Slum Play Author Sued as Slumlord,” New York World Telegram, June 13, 1959.
4. Helen Dudar, “To a Raisin in the Sun,” New York Post, July 1, 1959.
5. Truman K. Gibson, Knocking Down Barriers: My Fight for Black America (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2005), 48.
6. St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton, Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 232.
7. “Lorraine Hansberry Talks with Studs Terkel.”
8. Lorraine Hansberry, Les Blancs: The Collected Last Plays of Lorraine Hansberry (New York: Vintage 1994), 88.
9. Ibid., 107.
10. “Brandeis Lecture.”
11. Lorraine Hansberry, “Village Intellect Revealed,” New York Times, October 31, 1964.
12. Lorraine Hansberry, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window: A Drama in Two Acts, rev. stage ed. (New York: Samuel French, 1993), 161.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid., 88.
16. Ibid., 89.
17. Ibid., 106.
18. Ibid., 107.
19. Ibid., 108.
20. Ibid., 112.
21. Ibid., 114.
CHAPTER NINE: AMERICAN RADICAL
1. Baldwin, “Sweet Lorraine,” 445.
2. Lorraine Hansberry, “Stanley Gleason and the Lights That Need Not Die,” New York Times, January 17, 1960.
3. “JFK and the Student Airlift,” John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, 1960.
4. Lorraine Hansberry, “Congolese Patriot,” New York Times, March 26, 1961.
5. Ibid.
6. “Lumumba, Bunche, Baldwin,” Hansberry Papers, box 63, file 21.
7. Letter from Julian Mayfield to Lorraine Hansberry, Hansberry Papers, box 63, file 15.
8. Ibid.
9. “Metamorphasis [sic],” Hansberry Papers, box 60, file 12.
10. Ibid.
11. Lorraine Hansberry Speaks Out: Art and the Black Revolution (Caedmon Records, 1972), audio recording.
12. Ibid.
13. “Lorraine Hansberry,” FBI file.
14. Letter to Daniel Thompson, March 22, 1963, Hansberry Papers, box 56, file 10.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid.
19. Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son, 38.
20. James Baldwin, The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings, ed. Randall Kenan (New York: Knopf, 2010), 137.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid., 138.
23. Ibid., 139.
24. Jerome Smith, “A Freedom Rider’s First Stand,” AARP, May 3, 2011.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid.
27. “Rally to Support the Southern Freedom Movement,” Croton, New York, June 1963, Hansberry Papers, box 56, file 16.
28. Lorraine Hansberry, The Movement: Documentary of a Struggle for Equality (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1964), 13–14.
29. Ibid., 26.
30. Ibid., 98.
31. Ibid.
32. Nemiroff, To Be Young, Gifted and Black, 72.
33. Ibid.
34. Ibid., 21.
35. Ibid.
36. Muhammad Speaks, December 20, 1963.
37. James Wechsler, editorial, New York Times, June 22, 1964; “Racial Debate at Town Hall Gets Nowhere,” New York Post, June 16, 1964, both in Hansberry FBI file.
38. Hansberry, “The Black Revolution and the White Backlash,” in Grant, Black Protest.
39. Ibid.
40. Simone, “Mississippi Goddam.”
41. Hansberry, “The Black Revolution and the White Backlash,” in Grant, Black Protest.
42. Ibid.
43. Wechsler editorial, New York Times; “Racial Debate,” New York Post.
CHAPTER TEN: THE VIEW FROM CHITTERLING HEIGHTS
1. Edward W. Said, On Late Style: Music and Literature Against the Grain (New York: Knopf, 2007), 7.
2. Hansberry, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, 32.
3. Lorraine Hansberry letter to Evelyn Goldwasser, Hansberry Papers, box 4, file 3.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Lorraine Hansberry speech for W. E. B. Du Bois memorial, Hansberry Papers, box 56, file 21.
7. Ibid.
8. Hansberry Papers, box 63, file 15.
9. Nemiroff, To Be Young, Gifted and Black, 249–50.
10. “Puzzle,” Hansberry Papers, box 1, file 1.
11. Ibid.
12. Letter to Mae and Motya, Hansberry Papers, box 2, file 8.
13. Said, On Late Style, 7.
14. Email to author from Cornelia Cottom.
15. Harris, “The Double Life of Lorraine Hansberry,” 175.
16. Nemiroff, To Be Young, Gifted and Black, 102.
17. Hansberry Papers, box 4, file 5.
18. Hansberry Papers, box 4, file 4.
19. Letter from Alex Haley to Lorraine Hansberry, November 7, 1964, Hansberry Papers, box 4, file 5.
20. “Homegoing,” Hansberry Papers, box 4, file 8.
CHAPTER ELEVEN: HOMEGOING
1. Langston Hughes, The Collected Works of Langston Hughes: The Poems: 1941–1950, ed. Ramona Bass and Arnold Rampersad (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2001), 124.
2. James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room (New York: Dial Press, 1956), 121.
3. David Brun-Lambert, Nina Simone: The Biography (London: Aurum Press, 2009), 134.
4. Baldwin, “Sweet Lorraine,” 447.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Larry Pendleton, “To Lorraine,” January 12, 1965, Hansberry Papers, box 68, file 2.
8. Richard B. Moore, “For Lorraine Hansberry,” Richard B. Moore, Caribbean Militant in Harlem: Collected Writings, 1920–1972 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), 312.
9. Walt Whitman, “O Me! O Life!,” Leaves of Grass (1892), https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/51568/o-me-o-life.
10. Lorraine Hansberry obituary, National Review 17, no. 4 (January 26, 1965): 54.
11. Hansberry Papers, box 68, file 5.
12. Henry Francis Lyte, “Abide with Me” (1861).
13. James Forman eulogy, Hansberry Papers, box 68, file 2.
14. Paul Robeson eulogy, Hansberry Papers, box 68, file 2.
15. Ruby Dee eulogy, Hansberry Papers, box 68, file 2.
16. Simone, I Put a Spell on You, 87–88.
17. James Baldwin telegram to Robert Nemiroff, Hansberry Papers, box 68, file 5.
18. Sylvester Leaks, “The Legacy of Lorraine: Requiem for a Remarkable Woman,” Muhammad Speaks, February 3, 1965.
19. Joanne Grant, quoted in Leaks, “The Legacy of Lorraine.”
20. Leo Nemiroff eulogy, Hansberry Papers, box 68, file 2.
21. Ibid.
22. Herman Melville, Moby Dick; or, the White Whale (Boston: St. Botolph Society, 1892), 391.
23. Lorraine Hansberry Papers, box 68, file 2.
24. Martin Luther King Jr. telegram, Hansberry Papers, box 68, file 5.
25. Thomas Moore, “Come Ye Disconsolate” (1816).
26. Cohodas, Princess Noire, 168.
27. Ellen Cantarow et al., Moving the Mountain: Women Working for Social Change (New York: Feminist Press, 1980), 93.
28. The speech was published as an article, quotes from Lorraine Hansberry, “Memo to Negro Youth: The Nation Needs Your Gifts,” Negro Digest, August 1964, 26.
CONCLUSION: RETRACING MAY 2017
1. “Tribute Paid the Late Lorraine Hansberry.”
INDEX
Please note that page numbers are not accurate for the e-book edition.
NOTE: LH refers to Lorraine Hansberry; RN to Robert Nemiroff; Raisin to A Raisin in the Sun; and Sign to The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window
“Abide with Me” (hymn), 191
Abioseh (character in Les Blancs), 141–43
activism, radical: and activities in Harlem, 47–48, 50–52; and armed struggle, 142, 168–71; Black nationalist vision, 2, 44, 161–62; and the Daughters of Bilitis, 80–81; early exposure to, 4, 19, 24; emphasis on direct action, 89, 160; fiction reflecting, 54, 57; and fight against cancer, 193; and friendship with Simone, 117, 129–30; the Inter-American Peace Conference, 57–59; at 1963 AAF forum, 171–73; at 1963 RFK meeting, 163–65; O’Casey’s revolutionaries, 30; as response to despair, nihilism, 180; support for Wallace, 34. See also anticolonial internationalism; Baldwin, James Arthur; communism; Du Bois, W. E. B.; feminism
Actors Studio, New York, 118
aesthetics, personal, 31, 95, 119, 130. See also beauty; nature; writing craft
African independence movements. See anticolonial internationalism
Airlift Africa, 1960, 152–53
Ajijic, Mexico: changes since the 1950s, 200; poetry written at, 38–40; summer art program, LH at, 35–38
Algren, Nelson, 110
All the Dark and Beautiful Warriors (Hansberry), 124
Alton (character in Sign): experience of racism, injustice, 146–47; mocking of romanticism, 175
ambition, 32, 119, 135
The Amen Corner (Baldwin), 120
American Labor Party, 50
American Negro Exposition, 18
American Negro Theater, 53
American Student Movement, 46–47
Andrea (character in “Renascence”), mourning of lover by, 194
anger, rage, 3, 14–15, 59, 68, 154, 162–165, 190, 192. See also activism, radical
“Annie” (Hansberry), 77
Another Country (Baldwin): comparison with Sign, 128–29; controversies caused by, 128, 187; exploration of intimacy and grief in, 128; letter to LH about, 127
“The Anticipation of Eve” (Hansberry), 84–87
anticolonial internationalism: and apartheid, 67; Beneatha Younger’s interest in, 140; and the Inter-American Peace Conference, 57–59; and the joy of freedom, in Raisin, 140; LH’s commitment to, 48, 150, 196; Malcolm X’s commitment to, 196; ongoing support for African independence movements, 152–57; in SNCC, 168; and uprisings in Latin America, 58, 65, 157; and worldwide ghettoization, 22
Antoine (character in 400 Blows), LH’s love for, 96
Árbenz de Guzmán, Jacobo, 65
“Arnold” (Hansberry), 75–76
The Arrival of Mr. Todog (Hansberry), 180
art, as political, 47, 52, 161. See also social criticism; writing craft
assimilationist politics: Bunche as symbol of, 154, 159, 161, 202; and criticisms of Raisin, 112–13; LH’s rejection of, 122–23, 179, 202; and the popularity of Raisin, 100
Association of Artists for Freedom (AAF), 170–72
Atkinson, Brooks, 107
Attie, David, 102–3
Avon Books, 73–74
Bachrach, Marion, 193
Baker, Ella, 197
Baldwin, David, 136
Baldwin, David, Jr., 163
Baldwin, James Arthur (Jimmy): and the AAF, 171; on art in the struggle for liberation, 16; on Wright, 123; basis for friendship with, 118–19, 127; critique of Gide, 129; critique of Wright, 124–25; descriptions, memories of LH, 117, 119, 121, 150, 162–63; echoes of Les Blancs, 143; father, David, 136; on impact of Raisin on Black audiences, 100; on LH as a martyr, 187–88, 196; LH’s admiration for, 117–18; “Liberalism and the Negro” roundtable, 122–23; literary give-and-take with LH, 120, 123–27; loneliness, 134; message read at LH’s funeral, 192; and Nation of Islam, 159–60; at 1963 RFK meeting, 162–63; personality, similarities to LH, 127–28; politics, 125; post-movement life, death, 135; questioning of American Christianity, 126; recounting of LH at 1963 meeting with RFK, 162–64; respect for LH’s intellect and character, 119. See also specific works by Baldwin
Baltimore Afro-American, 47
Bandele Matoseh (character in “Metamorphasis”), exploration of politics of, 156–57
Baraka, Amiri (LeRoi Jones), 101, 111–12, 171
Barnes, Essie, 185
Beat writers, hipsters, views on, 109–10
beauty: in Ajijic, 36; Black, LH’s appreciation for, 54; Camp Unity, 68–69; Croton-on-Hudson home, 176–78; female, LH’s appreciation for, 87–88; importance in the Emily Jones writings, 87; Millay’s “Renascence” as meditation on, 195; natural, as solace and rebirth, 2–3, 38, 52, 68–69, 82, 86–87, 130, 176, 194
Beckett, Samuel, 180
“begging,” in Black vernacular, 120
Beier, JoAnn, 27–29, 33, 40
Belafonte, Harry, 53, 163
Belgian Congo, 51–52, 153. See also colonialism, imperialism; Lumumba, Patrice
“The Belgian Congo: A Preliminary Report on Its Land, Its History and Its Peoples” (Hansberry), 51–52
Belvin, Shawn, 184–85
Bendiner, Elmer, 57
Beneatha Younger (character in Raisin): ambitions, 97, 139; Cruse’s questioning verisimilitude of, 113–14; as self–portrait, 126
Bennett, Gwendolyn, 51
Bergman, Ingrid, 40
Berry, Edwin, 163
Betsy Ross Elementary, Chicago, 20
Bigger Thomas (character in Native Son): Baldwin’s critique, 124–25; Raisin as answer to, 124; as result of racism, 20
A Big White Fog (Ward), 139
Birmingham, Alabama, 167
Black Americans: beauty of, 54; housing discrimination, 9, 12–13, 17, 27; humanity and strength, LH’s sensitive depictions of, 76–77; 105, 124–25, 149, 154, 160; and mother wisdom, 138–39; perceptions of white Americans, 100–11; realities faced by, LH’s portrayals, 14, 105, 151, 160; stereotyping, 132; as survivors, 89, 105; working class, admiration for, 3–4, 19, 23. See also the ghetto; specific characters and writings
“Blackbird” (Simone), 134
Black elites. See Black middle class
Black Left: criticisms of Raisin, 102, 111–13
“Black Magic” (song), as LH’s favorite song in high school, 20–21
Black masses, and LH’s Black “man of the people,” 157
Black Metropolis (WPA Negro in Illinois publication), 104, 139
Black middle class: and acceptance by whites, 103–4, 159; Carl Hansberry’s business success, 9, 11; and Carl Hansberry’s activism, 17; and the civil rights movement, 167; and criticisms of Raisin, 104, 112–13; expectations for women, 26, 90; ghettoization of, 104, 113; LH’s experience of, 9, 11, 24; and life insurance, 113; “success of,” as excuse for inaction, 161
Black radical traditions: and the Black Power movement, 197; calls for radical militancy, 170–73; and efforts to work within the system, 17, 170; LH’s writings as reflection of, 14, 24–25, 100–10, 154–55, 158–59, 174; and LH’s views on need for militancy, 170–73; “Pirate Jenny,” Simone’s version, 133; and “radical” as term of praise, 150; separation from mainstream Black politics, 66–67; and the slowness of progress toward liberation, 187–88. See also activism, radical; Du Bois, W. E. B.; liberation
Black Renaissance, 17–18
“The Black Revolution and the White Backlash” forum (AAF), 171–73
The Blacks (Genet), LH’s response to, 110
Black vernacular: “begging,” 120; “down home” talk, 121–22; “little girl,” 185; “Mr. Charlie,” 126, “Sweet Lorraine,” 119, 121
Black writers, artists: American Negro Theater, 53; special challenges faced by, 100, 106–7, 111, 117; and today’s Broadway theater, 200. See also racism; specific writers/ artists
Bleeker Street apartment, 94
Blues for Mr. Charlie (Baldwin), 126
Bontemps, Arna, 178
Bradley, Omar, 32
Brandeis University, Martin Weiner Distinguished Lecture, 107–8, 110
Brecht, Bertolt, 108, 132–33
brilliance, genius, LH’s, 96, 118, 121, 137, 180, 192
Brooks, Gwendolyn: and Black women’s writing tradition, 88; influence on LH, 44; “Kitchenette Building,” 44, 98; “Negro in Illinois” WPA project, 18
Brown v. Board of Education, 65–67, 168
Buck, Pearl, 21
Bunche, Ralph: dismissal of protests following Lumumba assassination, 154; interest in among Ghanaians, 48; as symbol of assimilationist politics, 154, 159, 161, 202
Burgum, Edwin, 82
Burnham, Louis, 46–47. See also Freedom (newspaper)
Butterlin, Ernesto (Linares), 37–38
Callender, Eugene, 195
Camp Unity, Wingdale, NY, 68–69
cancer, pancreatic cancer: activist view of, 193; LH diagnosis and treatments, 177–78; LH’s death from, 186–87
Cane (Toomer), 89
capitalism: Brecht’s rejection of, 132–33; Chicago as reflection of, 36; debates about during LH’s youth, 21; LH’s experience and rejection of, 49, 56, 138, 150, 153, 159. See also Hansberry family
Cayton, Horace, 18–19
Cha, Theresa (Sappho), 79
Chakamoi, Oyil, 159
Chaney, James, 173
“Chanson Du Konallis” (Hansberry), 88–90
Charlie (character in Les Blancs), as white liberal, 142
Chicago, Illinois: American Negro Exposition, 18; arts scene in the 1930s, 17–21; Black press in, 17–18; Hansberry home in, 201; housing discrimination in, 9, 12; LH’s birth in, 9; LH’s returns to, reflections on, 45, 69, 74; segregation in, 201; tryouts for Raisin in, 97. See also childhood, LH’s; Hansberry family; South Side, Chicago
childhood, LH’s: admiration for working-class children, 3, 19, 23, 61; cultural experiences, 17–19; elementary and high school, 20; intellectual home environment, 4, 10–11, 19, 66, 214; leadership activities, 19; Mother, May I game, 10–11; political debates, 21–22; shame experienced during, 11, 24; teenaged heroes and preferences, 20–21; trauma and violence experienced during, 12–14
Childress, Alice: at Camp Unity, 68; friendship with LH in Harlem, 53; production of plays written by, 72–73
Childress, Alvin, 53
“Chitterling Heights,” Croton-on-Hudson, New York, 175, 203–4
Christianity, American, Baldwin’s questioning of, 126
Church of the Master, New York, 190–91