Lorraine Hansberry Controversy

One of the first things discussed in this class is how we form cities, and the cities, in turn, form us. The real estate agents played on already well-established white racism by renting out homes to black tenants to scare away white homeowners. In time, the value of the neighborhood would plummet, and this would now be a “black neighborhood.” This practice spread throughout Chicago as the black population rose. Whites would try to reclaim the neighborhoods that they believed were rightfully theirs the only way they knew how: violence. They created this invisible line between the blacks and the whites to keep the blacks as far away as possible. However, the black people kept crossing the line and taking over area that was not theirs. This city and the hostility that surrounded it was created by the people, but the segregation and divisiveness that the city emanated caused racial hatred and even more violence.

Lorraine Hansberry, born May 19, 1930, made a very prominent contribution to society in her short lived life. She was born to a middle class family as the youngest of four children. Her father was a successful real estate broker who also founded one of the first Negro banks in Chicago (Adams 247). Lorraine’s mother was a schoolteacher named Nannie Perry who later became a ward committeewoman.

On May 19,1930 a set of events was set in motion that an inspiration and touching to many. May 19,1930 Lorraine Vivian Hansberry was born in Chicago, Illinois, she was the youngest of four kids. Her parents were Nannie and Carl Augustus Hansberry.Nannie and Carl Hansberry were independent, politically active and Republican. Growing up she dealt with many problems involving her race, her family was victims of segregation. The effects of her childhood greatly affected how she went on about her life.

Her first play, A Raisin In the Sun, is based on her childhood experiences of desegregating a white neighborhood. It won the New York Drama Critic's Circle Award as Best Play of the Year. She was the youngest American, the fifth woman and the first black to win the award. Her success opened the floodgates for a generation of modern black actors and writers who were influenced and encouraged by her writing.

Lorraine Hansberry was born in Chicago on March 19, 1930 Tillman. She was an African American. She was one of four siblings that includes two brothers and one sister. In the 1930’s racism and segregation was prevalent in the time. Her parents were civil rights activist Carl and Nannie Hansberry Tillman. She grew up in the Woodlawn neighborhood on Chicago's South Side Rane. Her family was one of the wealthy African-American families in Chicago. When she was five years old, her parents got her a fur coat. She wore it to school one day and she got beaten for wearing it. Also when she was eight years old she moved to the white suburbs of Chicago and once her and her family arrived at their new homes they were threatened by mobs of white people. She nearly died after getting hit in the head with a brick. Her father went to court to fight for the legal right to live in that new neighborhood.The Supreme Court case of Hansberry v. Lee Weston Playhouse Theater Company. The characters in A Raisin in the Sun are black and live in Chicago just like Hansberry. The characters are also going through segregation/racism, similar to Hansberry.

Lorraine Hansberry was the first Black woman to pen a Broadway play. In her writings, she wrote male characters, many of whom were male protagonists. Being the feminist that she was, many people saw Hansberry’s depiction of Black men in one of two ways; either as an unhappy retreat from her feminist concerns or as a negative representation of Black manhood. Throughout her career, in works such as “The Village Voice” and “Les Blancs” Hansberry’s wrote other male characters that showed a progressive, revolutionary movement towards a positive and withstanding view of Black masculinity.

During the Great Black Migration, which lasted from 1916 to 1970, (“Great Migration”) African Americans left the South for the North because of the increasing demand for factory labor after the burst of the First Industrial Revolution. However, the assignment of African American neighborhoods could not accommodate the big increase of population; “black out-migration from the South surged from 197,000 during 1900-1910 to 525,000 during 1910-1920.” (Massey 573) Therefore, some African Americans ended up in the white neighborhoods, and the residential color line crossing infuriated the white in the North, so antiblack riots happened, and the hatred toward African Americans ended up triggering criminal justice. For instance, one of the reasons why the 1919 Chicago riot happened is that the police got an African American arrested while there was a white person who killed an African American by throwing rocks at him. In order to address the chaos caused by riots addressing African Americans’ residential line crossing, in 1924, the National Association of Real Estate Brokers spoke up by “stating that, ‘a Realtor should never be instrumental in introducing into a neighborhood...members of any race or nationality...whose presence will clearly be detrimental to property values in that neighborhood.’” (Massey 573) Instead of examining the root of black-and-white

This investigation will analyze to what extent did negative racial encounters in the 1950’s caused the white fight to the suburbs.African Americans began moving into Chicago in great numbers following the Great Depression. Tensions arose as they moved into the city, which sparked many whites to move into neighboring suburbs such as the ones highlighted on the map to your right.(Ebony Magazine 18) Following the great population change were negative racial encounters and segregation.This exhibit will inform others of the point of views of both sides of the White Flight in America beginning in the 1950s.

In recent years and over the course of the past fifty year history dating back to the civil rights movement of the 1960’s, the city of Chicago has been a center stage for violence, protest, racial clash, and inevitably segregation. Since the days that Martin Luther King Jr. led marches in some of Chicago’s most historic moments, the city’s sizable black population has hardly witnessed an upturn in their quest for equality. In fact, many studies have identified a pattern of poverty, violence, bias, and pre-mature mortality. All of which have led to the systematic oppression of an entire population in one of the nation’s largest cities. As a result, over the course of the past fifty years in Chicago, poverty has expanded, neighborhoods have become

Hannah-Jones examines the impact residential segregation: “Cities have largely been abandoned by white Americans, you have massive public housing projects, where nearly everyone in there is black and poor, and even if you’re middle class and black, you can’t move out” (Hannah-Jones, This American Life). Thus the government promoted segregation by redlining black communities, and white Americans moved into suburbs. And although the Fair Housing Act of 1968 was intended to end residential discrimination, Updike and Hannah Jones describe the lack of progress: “We no longer have segregation by law, but we still have segregation by fact, and this moderate view says that there's nothing we can or should do about it” (Hannah-Jones, This American Life). With residential segregation as an absolute fact, black Americans are left to suffer in unescapable ghettos – and often turn to drugs and violence – while white Americans enjoy extreme privilege. Michelle Alexander explores the significance of this discrepancy in her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of

“For much of black America life seems suspended. In the bleakness of filth and of the inner cities our people go through motions of living. On the street corners jobless men still wait, among the garbage and rats children still play. There are some features to the scene City blocks are ravaged by the riot, the bums and blocked buildings, the empty lots still stand like silent witnesses to their futile anger”(Lusane C ,1994, p.135).

Fifty years past after the Chicago Freedom Movement, and much has changed in Chicago. In 1966, a far southwest side neighborhood was 99.9 percent whites is now split between African-Americans, Hispanics, and with a few whites. African-Americans have come to hold positions of power throughout the world including the highest office in land. However, a lot has stayed the same too. Chicago is still one of America’s most segregated cities. The problems from the Chicago Freedom Movement have even gotten worse: gun violence, no jobs, and economic problems, and struggling schools. However, it is obvious that much has changed over the last fifty years. Now, everyone can drink from the same water fountain, no one has to sit at

Also, Hansberry discusses the hardships of a black family in a while society. She argues that life of a colored person is unfair and unacceptable on many different levels. A life without equality where black people where treated as inferior citizens. When the while supremacy ruled over everything, colored people packed up and left or delt with the improper treatment from the higher class white folks.

In my opinion, there are many reasons on why the Chicago’s Housing Authority’s “Plan for Transformation” creates more problems that it solved. The Plan for Transformation pursues to demolish all low-income high-rise building in Chicago. Because of that, in some ways, the Plan for Transformation are continuing racial and class segregation, as thousands of residents were displaced to the poorer south and west sides of Chicago. Thus, in my opinion, all these situations caused the poor African-Americans to be concentrated at the same place and lead them to have more social ties and denser networks that lead to more crimes and deviance among them.

force violence against minorities. The debates on immigration control and the segregation of neighborhoods in large cities.