Raisin Teachers Guide

A RAISIN

IN THE SUN

Study Guide for Teachers The Weston Playhouse Theatre Company

THE WESTON PLAYHOUSE THEATRE CO.

World-Class Theatre in the Heart of Vermont

A RAISIN IN THE SUN TEACHERS GUIDE- WPTC Page 2

A RAISIN IN THE SUN

Teacher’s Study Guide

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE

“Harlem” by Langston Hughes Page 3

ABOUT THE PLAY AND PLAYWRIGHT

About the Playwright Page 4

About the Play Page 7

Synopsis Page 8

Characters Page 8

Versions of A RAISIN IN THE SUN Page 10

Themes Page 12

CONNECTIONS AND CONTEXTS

History of African Americans in Chicago Page 16

Afrocentrism Page 21

DISCUSSION TOPICS AND QUESTIONS

Essay Topics and Review Questions Page 26

Quotes Page 27

RESOURCES Page 30

The 2009 Annual Teachers Workshop and creation of this study guide have been generously supported by The

Vermont Humanities Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities and The Mountain Room Foundation.

© 2009 Weston Playhouse Theatre Company, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) educational and cultural institution. WPTC

Performance Guides may be duplicated at no charge for educational purposes only. They may not be sold or used in

other publications without the express written consent of the Weston Playhouse Theatre Company.


“HARLEM”

By Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore--

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over--

like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

WHAT MAKES HUGHES’ POEM IMPORTANT?

Langston Hughes' poem "Harlem" exhibits how powerful subject

matter can produce what Ezra Pound defines poetry as being "news

that stays news." The poem begins by questioning, "What happens

to a dream deferred?" This draws on the black experience of the

American Dream. The poem questions the position of an oppressed

people and the subject has remained topical ever since the 1930s

when Hughes wrote the poem. The poem does not define what

exactly the "dream" is: economic equality, respect, dignity or forty

acres and a mule? Thirty years after the publication of Hughes' poem

in a speech illustrative of the impact of Hughes’ question, Dr. Martin

Luther King Jr. defined the "dream."

A "raisin in the sun" is a charged simile. It's one of the most powerful images in Black Literature. Lorraine

Hansberry used this line as the title of her play about the black experience in America, which shows how

powerful the image remained for generations after Hughes. Normally one would expect a grape to be left

in the sun in order to produce a raisin. Here the raisin, an object already drained, is left in the sun. The

image brings to mind slavery and sharecropping institutions that forced blacks to work in the fields under

the sun. The last line of the poem--"Or does it explode?"—has been and remains charged with meaning

for blacks. It was meaningful for the blacks beaten and terrorized as they went on "freedom rides," bus

trips from the South to Washington D.C. to demand equality; for the SNCC; for the blacks attacked by

police in Birmingham, Alabama during the sixties, and for all African Americans facing inequality today.


About the Playwright: Lorraine Hansberry

Lorraine Vivian Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun

exploded onto the American theater scene on

March 11, 1959, with such force that it

garnered for the then-unknown black female

playwright the Drama Circle Critics Award for

1958-59--in spite of such luminous competition

as Tennessee Williams' Sweet Bird of Youth,

Eugene O'Neill's A Touch of the Poet, and

Archibald MacLeish's J.B.

Since its Broadway debut, Raisin has been

translated into over thirty languages, including

the language of the eastern German Sorbische

minority, and has been produced in such

culturally diverse places as China, the former

Czechoslovakia, England, France, and the

former Soviet Union. Its universal appeal defies,

in retrospect, some of the early critics' views of

Raisin as being simply "a play about Negroes."

Although Raisin addresses specific problems of

a black family in Southside Chicago, it also

mirrors the very real problems of all people. In

an interview with social historian Studs Terkel,

Hansberry explains, ". . . in order to create the

universal, you must pay very close attention to the specific."

Lorraine Hansberry was born in Chicago on May 19, 1930, the last of four children born to the

independent, politically active, Republican, and well-to-do Carl and Nannie Perry Hansberry. Hospitals

were required at that time to list the racial identities of newborns; however, upon receiving their

daughter's birth certificate, Hansberry's parents crossed out the word "Negro" and wrote "Black," an act

of minor significance but certainly a testament to the Afrocentric ideology that the elder Hansberrys

bequeathed to their children.

Although 1930 is the year that most Americans associate with the Great Depression, Hansberry's family

remained economically solvent through this period. By 1930s standards, the Hansberrys were certainly

upper middle class, but by the standards of most Chicago blacks, many of whom lived in abject poverty at

this time, they would have been considered "rich."

Hansberry was never comfortable with her "rich girl" status, identifying instead with the "children of the

poor." Admiring the feistiness exhibited by these children who were so often left alone, Hansberry often

imitated their maturity and independence. They wore housekeys around their necks, symbols of their

"latchkey children" status, so Hansberry decided to wear keys around her neck--any keys that she might

find, including skate keys--so that she too might be thought of as one of them. The characters in Raisin do

not know the middle-class comforts of the Hansberry family; in her plays, Hansberry focuses on the class

of black people whom she cared most about, even though her knowledge of these people was, at best,

peripheral.

Though Hansberry grew up on the south side of Chicago in the Woodlawn neighborhood, she never lived

in a "Younger" household, although she closely observed such households throughout her childhood.


Hansberry's father, Carl, not only established one of the first black savings banks in Chicago, but he was

also a successful real estate businessman. Credited with developing the concept of the "kitchenette," the

studio apartment, he was able to maximize all available space, converting a large area into several smaller

areas.

The family then moved into an all-white neighborhood, where they faced racial discrimination. Hansberry

attended a predominantly white public school while her parents fought against segregation. Always

politically active, Hansberry’s father engaged in a legal battle against a racially restrictive covenant that

attempted to prohibit African-American families from buying homes in a white area where no other

blacks lived. The legal struggle over the Hansberry’s move to the neighborhood led to the landmark

Supreme Court case of Hansberry v. Lee, 311 U.S. 32 (1940). Though victors in the Supreme Court,

Hansberry's family was subjected to what Hansberry would later describe as a "hellishly hostile white

neighborhood."

Shortly afterward, Hansberry herself was nearly killed by a brick hurled through a window by angry

whites. Hansberry remembers her mother's "standing guard" many times with a loaded gun in order to

protect her family from the violence of racism. Such traumatic memories were probably a part of the

reason that Hansberry incorporated into her first play the theme of a black family's courageous decision

to move into a hostile and new environment.

When Hansberry enrolled at the University of Wisconsin, she had every intention of remaining there for

the four years necessary for graduation. However, after two years, her growing interest in the arts took

her other places for brief periods. She attended the Art Institute of Chicago, Roosevelt College, the New

School of Social Research in New York, and studied art in Guadalajara, Mexico. In New York, she worked

on the staff of Paul Robeson's Freedom magazine, hung around the theater, read plays, and honed her

craft. Several critics have noted that Hansberry's artwork, her drawings and sketches, is almost as

noteworthy as her writing.

Her father's death at the age of fifty-one touched Hansberry deeply; she often said that it was perhaps

her father's constant battle with the forces of racism that hastened his early death. Interestingly, the

cause and effect of much of the action in Raisin evolves as a consequence of the death of Big Walter, a

character whom the audience never sees, although much of the dialogue contains references to him.

Hansberry's own untimely death of pancreatic cancer at the age of thirty-four on January 12, 1965, left a

void in American theater and in the circle of black writers. Jean Carey Bond, in an article in Freedomways

magazine, says of Hansberry: "[Her] brief sojourn was, in one of its dimensions, a study in pure style. Born

into material comfort, yet baptized in social responsibility; intensely individual in her attitudes and

behavior, yet sensitive to the wills and aspirations of a whole people; a lover of life, yet stalked by death--

she deliberately fashioned out of these elements an articulate existence of artistic and political

commitment, seasoned with that missionary devotion which often intensifies the labors of the mortally

ill."

Hansberry left behind three unfinished plays and an unfinished semi-autobiographical novel.


Her Works

• A Raisin in the Sun (1959)

• A Raisin in the Sun (film), screenplay (1961)

o A Raisin in the Sun (film), produced (2008)

• On Summer (Essay)

• The Drinking Gourd (1960)

• The Movement: Documentary of a Struggle for Equality (1964)

• The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window (1965)

• To Be Young, Gifted and Black: Lorraine Hansberry in Her Own Words (1969)

• Les Blancs: The Collected Last Plays / by Lorraine Hansberry Edited by Robert Nemiroff (1994)

Other works

The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window ran for 99 performances on Broadway and closed the night she died.

Her ex-husband Robert Nemiroff became the literary executor for several of her unfinished works.

Notably, he adapted many of her writings into the play, To Be Young, Gifted and Black, which was the

longest-running Off-Broadway play of the 1968-1969 season. It appeared in book form the following year

under the title, To Be Young, Gifted and Black: Lorraine Hansberry in Her Own Words.

Raisin, a musical based on A Raisin in the Sun, opened in New York in 1973, (Book by Nemiroff, music by

Judd Woldin, lyrics by Robert Britten) winning the Tony Award for Best Musical.

Legacy

A result of the success of A Raisin in the Sun was Hansberry's becoming the foremother of the modern

African-American drama. She also contributed to the understanding of abortion, discrimination, and

Africa. In San Francisco, The Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, which specializes in original stagings and revivals

of African-American theatre, is named in her honor. Singer and pianist Nina Simone, who was a close

friend of Hansberry, used the title of her unfinished play to write a civil rights-themed song "To Be Young,

Gifted and Black" together with Weldon Irvine. The single reached the top 10 of the R&B charts. A studio

recording by Simone was released as a single and the first live recording on October 26, 1969 was

captured on Black Gold (1970).

In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Lorraine Hansberry on his list of 100 Greatest African

Americans.


About the Play

Hansberry's recognition of the close relationship

between art and propaganda is the reason she

chose the environment of the powerless as a

backdrop for her work about American culture.

Her objective was to be a spokesperson for those

who, prior to Raisin, had no voice. The thought

that anyone outside of the black community

would care about the struggles of a black family

in Southside Chicago, prior to the opening of

Raisin, was all but preposterous. Not only did

Hansberry choose as the voice of her theme a

black family (and a poor black family, at that), but

she also threaded information about Africa

throughout the fabric of her play, mainly through

her most stable character, Asagai, Beneatha's

suitor from Nigeria.

Through Asagai (and sometimes through

Beneatha), the audience gains valuable insight

into African history, politics, art, and philosophy.

Even the character of George Murchison

glorifies, by default, the ancient African

civilizations when he derisively mentions "the

African past," "the Great West African Heritage,"

"the great Ashanti empires," "the great Songhay

civilizations," "the great sculpture of Benin," and

"poetry in the Bantu." Although George is being facetious, still he uses adjectives that praise and laud the

accomplishments of a continent with which many theatergoers, at the time of the opening of Raisin, were

extremely unfamiliar.

To structure her drama, Hansberry utilizes the traditional classic European dramatic forms: Raisin is

divided into three conventional acts with their distinct scenes. Yet, Hansberry employs techniques of the

absurdist drama--particularly in the scene in which a drunken Walter Lee walks in on Beneatha's African

dancing and is able to immediately summon a memory which psychically connects him with an African

past that his character, in reality, would not have known. Walter Lee is able to sing and dance and chant

as though he had studied African culture.

Hansberry's skillful use of this momentary absurdity makes Walter's performance seem absolutely

plausible to her audience. Note also in this work that Hansberry refers to an ancient Greek mythological

titan, Prometheus, then makes a reference to an icon of the American entertainment world, Pearl Bailey,

and then a reference to Jomo Kenyatta, a major African scholar and politician, yet there is no loss of

continuity because the audience is able to immediately perceive the connection.


SYNOPSIS

This play tells the story of a lower-class black family's struggle to gain middle-class acceptance. When the

play opens, Mama, the sixty-year-old mother of the family, is waiting for a $10,000 insurance check from

the death of her husband, and the drama will focus primarily on how the $10,000 should be spent.

The son, Walter Lee Younger, is so desperate to be a better provider for his growing family that he wants

to invest the entire sum in a liquor store with two of his friends. The mother objects mainly for ethical

reasons; she is vehemently opposed to the idea of selling liquor. Minor conflicts erupt over their

disagreements.

When Mama decides to use part of the money as a down payment on a house in a white neighborhood,

her conflict with Walter escalates and causes her deep anguish. In an attempt to make things right

between herself and her son, Mama entrusts Walter Lee with the rest of the money. He immediately

invests it secretly in his liquor store scheme, believing that he will perhaps quadruple his initial

investment.

One of Walter Lee's prospective business partners, however, runs off with the money, a loss which tests

the spiritual and psychological mettle of each family member. After much wavering and vacillating, the

Youngers decide to continue with their plans to move--in spite of their financial reversals and in spite of

their having been warned by a representative of the white neighborhood that blacks are not welcome.

List of Characters

Ruth Younger

The thirtyish wife of Walter Lee Younger and the

mother of Travis, their ten-year-old son. Ruth acts as

peacemaker in most of the explosive family

situations. Very low-key, Ruth reveals her strongest

emotions only when she learns of the possibility of

their moving to a better neighborhood.

Travis Younger

The ten-year-old son of Walter and Ruth Younger.

Living in a household with three generations in

conflict, Travis skillfully plays each adult against the

other and is, as a result, somewhat "spoiled." In spite

of this, he is a likeable child.

Walter Lee Younger

In his middle thirties, he is the husband of Ruth, father of Travis, brother of Beneatha, and son of Lena

(Mama) Younger. Walter works as a chauffeur and drinks a bit too much at times. When he discovers that

his mother will receive a $10,000 check from his father's insurance, he becomes obsessed with his dreams

of a business venture which will give him financial independence and, in his mind, will make him a more

valuable human being.

Beneatha Younger

The twentyish sister of Walter Lee and the daughter of Lena Younger. She is a college student planning to

go to medical school. The only family member privileged to have the opportunity for a higher education,

she is sometimes a little overbearing in the pride she takes in being an "intellectual."


Lena Younger (Mama)

The mother of Walter Lee and Beneatha, mother-in-law of Ruth, and grandmother of Travis. Lena's

(Mama's) every action is borne out of her abiding love for her family, her deep religious convictions, and

her strong will that is surpassed only by her compassion. Mama's selfless spirit is shown in her plans to

use her $10,000 insurance check for the good of her family, part of which includes plans to purchase a

house in a middle-class white neighborhood.

Joseph Asagai

An African college student from Nigeria, Asagai is one of Beneatha's suitors. Mannerly, good looking, and

personable, he is well liked by all members of the Younger household.

George Murchison

Beneatha's other boyfriend, he too is a college student. His wealthy background alienates him from the

poverty of the Youngers. Easily impressed, Ruth is the

only member of the Younger household who naively

overlooks George's offensive snobbishness.

Mrs. Johnson

Brash and abrasive neighbor of the Youngers, she

insensitively points out to the Youngers all the negative

repercussions that await them should they decide to

move into the white neighborhood.

Karl Lindner

A middle-aged white man, Lindner is the spokesman

for the white community into which the Youngers plan

to move. He has been sent to persuade the Youngers

not to move into the white neighborhood. In fact, he

has been authorized by the white community to offer

the Youngers a monetary incentive not to move in.

Bobo

The somewhat dimwitted friend of Walter Lee who,

along with another friend, Willy, plans to invest in

Walter Lee's business scheme.

Two Moving Men

Having no speaking parts, they enter at the end of the play to help the Youngers move to their new

neighborhood.

Walter Younger

The husband of Lena Younger, father of Walter Lee and Beneatha, and grandfather of Travis. His death

before the action of Act I provides the insurance money that will change the lives of the Younger family.

Willy

The unscrupulous "friend" of Walter Lee and Bobo who absconds with all the money for the prospective

business venture. Although the audience never meets him, Willy's character is assessed through the

dialogue of others.


VERSIONS OF A RAISIN IN THE SUN

Original Stage Play, Original Screenplay, the American Playhouse Presentation, musical and recent

Broadway revival and 2008 Made-for-TV movie.

The complete, original version of Hansberry's play includes several scenes with which most people are not

familiar, for these were omitted from the original stage presentations of Raisin when it opened in 1959.

Most of the cuts from the complete version were made because of time constraints.

For example, the entire scene with Mrs. Johnson was eliminated from the original stage presentation of

Raisin. Another deletion from the complete version was the scene in which Beneatha has cut her hair and

is wearing it in the "natural" style that she knows Asagai will admire.

This scene, although very important to Hansberry, was taken out because, just before the show opened,

the actress playing the role of

Beneatha had inadvertently

been given a disastrous haircut,

which everyone involved in the

production of Raisin felt would

have made a negative

statement to the audience

about Hansberry's true,

positive feelings about the

natural hairstyle. The dramatic

change in Beneatha's hairstyle

is shown in the complete

version, the American

Playhouse television

presentation.

Another omission from the

original stage production, but

one which appears in the complete version (and in the American Playhouse presentation), is the scene in

which Travis is playing with a group of neighborhood boys; for sport, they are chasing a rat. Later, Travis is

at home, telling his family about the fun he had chasing the rat with his friends.

In each of these scenes which were omitted from

the original stage production, Hansberry was

attempting to make a deeply felt statement. In the

scene with Mrs. Johnson, Hansberry takes a

position on the Booker T. Washington/W. E. B. Du

Bois debate, in which Hansberry is clearly siding

with Du Bois. Hansberry is also using this scene to

poke fun at the blacks who are too fearful of racist

reprisals to demand equality.

In the scene where Beneatha unveils the natural

look, Hansberry is making a statement on the

identity crisis within the black community long

before the Afrocentric awakening of the 90s.


In the scene where Travis is chasing a rat for sport, Hansberry is attempting to show the horrors that daily

confront the children of the poor.

The screenplay of Raisin (the film was released in 1960) is altered in many ways. In Act I, Scene 1, Walter

Lee gives Travis a dollar (that he can ill afford). In the complete version and in the American Playhouse

presentation, Walter Lee returns to ask Ruth for fifty cents for carfare to work. This is omitted from the

screenplay. In the screenplay, not only does Walter not return, but he is later seen at his job as a

chauffeur. In this scene in the screenplay, Walter is standing near his boss' limousine in a heavily

populated metropolitan area. In the stage presentation and even in the complete version (which includes

the American Playhouse presentation), Walter talks about going to the Green Hat, a bar that he frequents,

but the screenplay version has Mama going to the bar in order to find Walter. In the screenplay, Mama

goes to the Green Hat (called “The Kitty Kat”) and gives Walter the $6,500 in the bar.

The screenplay also shows the Younger family actually going to

their new house in Clybourne Park. Neither the original stage

production nor the complete version nor the American Playhouse

presentation shows the Younger family in any setting other than

their Southside apartment.

A Raisin in the Sun was revised as the musical Raisin and ran on

Broadway from October 1973 until December 1975 for 847

performances. It won the Tony and Grammy Awards as Best

Musical, and it toured 50 cities. Raisin was so well received that

the mayors of the cities and the governors of the states in which it

toured often proclaimed the show's arrival as "Lorraine Hansberry

Day."

A recent Broadway revival and TV movie starred Rap star Sean Combs and Phylicia Rashad and sought to

update the play for a new generation. The Broadway revival opened in 2004 and won Drama Desk Awards

for Phylicia Rashad and Audra McDonald. The Made-for-TV movie was released in 2008. Both versions

included some of the previously omitted scenes and the movie includes updated versions of scenes from

the original screenplay.


THEMES

The underlying theme of Hansberry's Raisin is in the question posed by Langston Hughes' poem “Harlem”

from "Montage of a Dream Deferred," when he asks, "What happens to a dream deferred?" and then

goes on to list the various things that might happen to a person if his dreams are put "on hold,"

emphasizing that whatever happens to a postponed dream is never good. More simply, the question

Hansberry poses in her play is, "What happens to a person whose dreams grow more and more

passionate--while his hopes of ever achieving those dreams grow dimmer each day?" Even the Bible

concerns itself with this problem; in Proverbs 13:12, we read: "Hope deferred maketh the heart sick; but

when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life." We see clearly what happens to Walter as his dream

continues to be postponed by too many circumstances that are beyond his control.

Several other motifs are also successfully intertwined into this drama. Hansberry's avant-garde concerns,

her prophetic political vision, and her ability to perceive the future importance of events that few people

in 1959 were even aware of are used as lesser motifs or minor themes throughout the play.

The issue of feminism is one such example. Three generations of women reside in the Younger household,

each possessing a different political perspective of herself as a woman. Mama (Lena Younger), in her early

sixties, speaks "matter-of-factly" about her husband's prior womanizing. Ruth, about thirty, is more vocal

about her feelings to her own husband than Mama was; still, Ruth is not as enlightened about a woman's

"place" as is Beneatha, who is about twenty and pursuing a career that, in 1959, was largely a male-

dominated profession.

Much of the conflict between Beneatha and Walter revolves around Walter's chauvinistic view of

Beneatha. When Walter complains that Beneatha's medical schooling will cost more than the family can

afford, he bases his argument on the fact that since Beneatha is a woman, she should not even want to

become a doctor. Walter's resentment and anger erupts in Act I, Scene 1: "Who in the hell told you you

had to be a doctor? If you so crazy 'bout messing 'round with sick people--then go be a nurse like other

women--or just get married and be quiet."

Beneatha's defiance toward Walter is symbolic of her defiance toward all barriers of stereotype. She

never yields to Walter and, in some cases, even goads him into a confrontation. Ruth's advice to Beneatha

is that she should just "be nice" sometimes and not argue over every one of Walter's insensitive remarks.

This advice is, of course, totally unacceptable to a character like Beneatha, to whom feistiness is a virtue

and docility a "sin." Whereas Ruth tries to change herself in order to please everyone in her life, most

especially to please her husband, Beneatha insists that others accept her as she is. She makes it clear,

early on, that she has no use for George Murchison because of his shallow beliefs. She makes it clear to

Ruth that she doesn't understand how anyone could have married someone like Walter. And she defies

her mother on religious points; in fact, Mama has to slap Beneatha before she will back down. However,

after Mama has left the room, Beneatha still says to Ruth that there is no God.

Mama is the "head of her household" only by default. She had to take charge after the death of Big

Walter, whose name suggests that he was in charge of his family prior to his death. Mama appears to be

always ready to hand over the reins to her son and let him be "head of the household" for one reason: He

is a man. She entrusts Walter with the remaining insurance money because she feels that she has robbed

him of his "manhood" by having done with the money what she thought was best. Mama is the type of

woman who believes that the man should be in charge. Ruth apparently agrees, but Beneatha does not.

Hansberry skillfully introduces issues of feminism that were not addressed as a political issue until a

decade after the play's Broadway opening.


Along with feminism, the theme of fecundity (fertility; being fruitfully prolific) is threaded throughout this

play. Three generations of Youngers live in the same household; in addition, both Ruth's possible

pregnancy and her contemplation of abortion become focal points of the drama, and Mama's reference

to the child that she lost is emphasized. She does not merely mention Baby Claude in conversation; rather

she dwells upon her loss dramatically.

At the beginning of the play, Ruth serves eggs--but not without getting into an argument with Walter over

the eggs--which again accentuates the importance of this symbol of fertility to the play. In addition,

toward the end of the play, we learn that Mama's maiden name was Lena Eggleston, a name that

underscores the theme of fecundity as much as the argument over eggs at the beginning of the play.

A related motif is the subject of abortion, which was taboo and illegal in 1959. Ruth considers an abortion

in order to save her "living family" from further economic distress. The slightest reference to the word,

however, sends the other family members into an emotional tailspin. Conflicts erupt between Mama and

Walter, between Mama and Ruth, and between Ruth and Walter. Even Beneatha's inadvertently callous

response to Ruth's pregnancy is "Where is it going to sleep? On the roof?" Other remarks are also proof

that Beneatha's views on unplanned pregnancy differ sharply from her mother's. Mama says in

exasperation: "We [are] a people who give children life, not who destroys them"; she would never agree

to Ruth's having an abortion.

Ruth is trapped both by poverty and by the knowledge that her relationship with Walter Lee is rapidly

deteriorating. Walter, although surprised to learn that she is contemplating an abortion, is still too caught

up with his "get-rich-quick" scheme to offer her emotional support. Ruth contemplates an abortion

because she believes this decision would be in the best interest of her family. Whether or not Ruth will

actually decide on an abortion is debatable, for Ruth says to Mama in Act I, "Ain't no thin' can tear at you

like losin' your baby." Ruth says this as Mama is recounting the pain of having lost her own baby, Claude.

At this point in the play, Ruth's pregnancy has not yet been verified, but the dialogue spawned by the

abortion controversy in this drama is as relevant today as it was in 1959, when the play opened.

Afrocentrism, or the expression of pride in one's African heritage, so popular among the black youth of

the 1990s, was, in 1959, a little-known phenomenon. But Lorraine Hansberry's affinity for all things

African resulted from the people of greatness that she was acquainted with through her family. Langston

Hughes, for example, was a friend of her father's and often came to the Hansberry home for dinner.

Lorraine's uncle, Leo Hansberry, a noted historian and professor, was the teacher of Kwame Nkrumah

while he was a student at Howard University (Kwame Nkrumah was the leader of the fight for freedom of

the Gold Coast from British rule and became its first president in 1957. The British name "Gold Coast" was

changed to the Republic of Ghana in honor of that ancient kingdom.). Hansberry's knowledge and pride in

her African heritage was a result of her family and her family's associations, something of which few other

blacks could boast.

In this play, Beneatha expresses Hansberry's knowledge of and pride in her African heritage. Beneatha's

Afrocentric spirit is nurtured by her relationship with the African, Asagai. Not only is Beneatha's dialogue

peppered with a knowledge of 1959 African politics, but her dialogue also shows a knowledge of the

ancient kingdoms of Africa, something few historians spoke of and even fewer people knew about.

In Act II, Scene 1, when Beneatha defines an "assimilationist Negro" as being "someone who is willing to

give up his own culture and submerge himself completely in the dominant . . . oppressive culture," George

Murchison responds immediately with, "Here we go! A lecture on the African past! On our Great West

African Heritage! In one second we will hear all about the great Ashanti empires; the great Songhay

civilizations and the great sculpture of Benin and then some poetry in the Bantu. . . . Let's face it, baby,

your heritage is nothing but a bunch of raggedy-assed spirituals and some grass huts."


In response to George's self-deprecating sarcasm about the historical achievements of black people,

Beneatha screams at him from another room: "The Ashanti were performing surgical operations when the

English--were still tatooing themselves with blue dragons." It is clear that whatever George knows about

Africa's past great civilizations has been learned through his association with Beneatha.

Note that when Beneatha's African suitor, Asagai, is on his way to the Younger apartment, Beneatha gives

her mother a hasty briefing on African history, coaching her mother in conversational protocol. She tells

Mama that Asagai is from Nigeria, which Mama immediately confuses with Liberia. After correcting her,

Beneatha begs Mama not to make stereotypical comments about Africans and tells her that the only thing

that most people seem to know about Africa has been learned from Tarzan movies. Beneatha berates

those missionaries who, like Mama, are more concerned with changing the African's religion than in

overthrowing colonial rule.

After Asagai arrives, Mama's attempt to impress him with her new knowledge of Africa is almost pathetic

as she parrots what Beneatha has just told her, echoing Beneatha's previous dialogue almost verbatim.

When Raisin opened in 1959, most people's knowledge of Africa was as limited as Mama's. Although a

more enlightened modern audience might be chagrined by the political misconceptions of the late 50s,

Lorraine Hansberry's prophetic vision is accurate and important, as though she envisioned the day that

the true history of Africa would be widely known and that the shackles of colonialism would be broken. In

1959, when Raisin opened on Broadway, most African countries were under European rule. The following

year, 1960, fifteen African countries gained their independence, and in eight more years, thirteen more

had become independent.

In Act III, Beneatha and Asagai address the possibility of the African countries' replacing oppressive

colonial rule with corrupt African leaders. Beneatha asks, "Independence and then what? What about the

crooks and thieves and just plain idiots who will come into power and steal and plunder the same as

before--only now they will be black and do it in the name of the new Independence." Kwame Nkrumah

received worldwide praise for his role in leading Ghana into independence in 1960.

However, immediately after taking office, Nkrumah began to spend the country's money with reckless

abandon and embraced the Communist Parry. The people rebelled against all of his dealings, staged a

successful coup d'etat, and he was overthrown in 1966. In retrospect, Hansberry's prophetic accuracy is

once again evident, for Nkrumah, in particular, was one of the leaders most admired by Hansberry in

1959, when Raisin opened. Other African nations also experienced political instability after their post-

1959 independence.

Closely related to the theme of Afrocentrism in this play is Beneatha's decision to change her hairstyle.

Although the dialogue concerning Beneatha's decision to change her hairstyle was omitted from the

original stage presentation and from the original screenplay, this dialogue is in the complete, original

version of the play and was used in the 1989 American Playhouse TV presentation.

In Act I, Scene 2, Asagai's off-hand remark about Beneatha's straightened hair is the catalyst for her

dramatic change in Act II, Scene 1 (ironically, for her date with George Murchison and not for a date with

Asagai). In Act I, Scene 2, when Asagai presents Beneatha with Nigerian tribal robes, he says, "You wear it

well . . . mutilated hair and all." His meaning is clear, although Beneatha's sensitivity does not permit her

to immediately grasp his meaning. So Asagai explains by asking, "Were you born with it [your hair] like

that?"

In Act II, Scene 1, Beneatha was supposed to have come out for her date with a natural (unstraightened)

hairstyle; this scene, however, was omitted at the last minute from the original stage presentation

because the actress, Diana Sands, in the role of Beneatha, received an imperfect haircut. Since this would

have given a negative impression of the natural look, both Hansberry and Sands decided to omit the


hairstyle change from the Broadway opening. It is interesting to note that in 1959, Beneatha's new

hairstyle would have sent some shock waves throughout the audience, whereas ten years later, the same

style had become so popular nationwide that it was promoted by Madison Avenue as the "Afro." Once

again, Hansberry's prophetic vision was accurate and on target.

Throughout Raisin, Hansberry expresses her own desire to see blacks in entrepreneurial ventures. So few

blacks were in business in 1959 that sociologists of that day addressed this concern in academic

publications. Mama says, in response to Ruth's echoing Walter's dream of owning his own business, "We

ain't no business people, Ruth. We just plain working folks," and Ruth answers with: "Ain't nobody

business people till they go into business. Walter Lee says colored people ain't never going to start getting

ahead till they start gambling on some different kinds of things in the world--investments and things."

Because the percentage of black people who own their own businesses has increased dramatically since

1959, one might conclude that, here once again, Hansberry had an accurate view of the future.


HISTORY OF AFRICAN AMERICANS IN CHICAGO

The history of African Americans in Chicago dates back to Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable’s trading activities

in the 1780s. Fugitive slaves and freedmen established the city’s first black community in the 1840s. By

the late 19th c., the first black had been elected to office. The Great Migrations from 1910-1960 brought

hundreds of thousands of blacks from the South to Chicago, where they became an urban population, and

created churches, community organizations, important businesses, and great music and literature. African

Americans of all classes built community on the South Side of Chicago for decades before the Civil Rights

Movement. Their goal was to build a community where blacks could pursue life with the same rights as

whites.

The Great Migration

The black population in Chicago significantly increased in the

early to mid-1900s, due to the Great Migration out of the

South. While African Americans made up less than two

percent of the city's population in 1910, by 1960 the city was

nearly 25 percent black.

At the turn of the century, southern states

succeeded in passing new constitutions and

laws that disfranchised most blacks and many

poor whites. Deprived of the right to vote, they

could not sit on juries or run for office. They

were subject to laws passed by white legislators.

Segregated education for black children and

other services were consistently underfunded in

a poor, agricultural economy. Violence against

blacks had increased while Jim Crow laws imposing segregation created more restrictions in public life. In

addition, the boll weevil infestation ruined the cotton industry in the early 20th century. Voting with their

feet, blacks started migrating out of the South to the North, where they could live more freely, get their

children educated, and get new jobs.

Industry buildup for World War I pulled thousands of workers to the North, as did the rapid expansion of

railroads and the meatpacking and steel industries. Between 1915 and 1960, hundreds of thousands of

black southerners migrated to Chicago to escape violence and segregation, and to seek economic

freedom in the North. They went from being a mostly rural population to one that was mostly urban. “The

migration of African Americans from the rural south to the urban north became a mass movement.” The

Great Migration radically transformed Chicago, both politically and culturally.

From 1910-1940, most African Americans who migrated North were from rural areas. They had been

chiefly sharecroppers and laborers, although some were landowners pushed out by the boll weevil

disaster. After years of underfunding of public education for blacks in the South, they tended to be poorly

educated, with relatively low skills to apply to urban jobs. Like the European rural immigrants, they had to

rapidly adapt to a different urban culture. Many took advantage of better schooling in Chicago and their

children learned quickly. After 1940, however, which was the much larger migration, black migrants

tended to be already urbanized, from southern cities and towns. They were the most ambitious, better

educated with more urban skills to apply in their new homes.

The masses of new migrants arriving in the cities captured public attention. At one point in the 1940s,

3,000 African Americans were arriving every week in Chicago - stepping off the trains from the South and


making their ways to neighborhoods they had learned about from friends and the Chicago Defender. The

Great Migration was charted and evaluated. The North was starting to change, and urban white

northerners started to get worried, as their neighborhoods rapidly changed. At the same time, recent and

older immigrants competed for jobs and housing with the new arrivals, especially on the South Side,

where the steel and meatpacking industries had the most numerous jobs.

Ethnic Irish were heavily implicated in gang violence and the rioting that erupted in 1919. They had been

the most established ethnic group and defended their power and territory in the South Side against both

ethnic whites and blacks. “Chicago was a focal point of the great migration and the racial violence that

came in its wake.” With Chicago's industries steadily expanding, opportunities opened up for new

migrants, including southerners, to find work. The railroad and meatpacking industries recruited black

workers. Chicago’s African-American newspaper, the Chicago Defender, made the city well known to

southerners. It sent bundles of papers south on the Illinois Central trains, and African-American Pullman

Porters would drop them off in black towns. “Chicago was the most accessible northern city for African

Americans in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas.” “Then between 1916 and 1919, 50,000 blacks came to

crowd into the burgeoning black belt, to make new demands upon the institutional structure of the South

Side.”

Segregation

Especially after the Civil War, Illinois had some of the most

progressive anti-discrimination legislation in the nation. School

segregation was first outlawed in 1874, and segregation in public

accommodations was first outlawed in 1885.

In the 1920s, however, the state became a pioneer in using racially

restrictive housing covenants, a type of private restriction on

housing integration. The large black population in Chicago (40,000

in 1910, and 278,000 in 1940) faced some of the same

discrimination in Chicago as they had in the South. It was hard for

many blacks to find jobs and find decent places to live because of

the competition for housing among different groups of people at a

time when the city was expanding in population so dramatically.

On the Streets of the South Side

At the same time that blacks moved from the South in the Great Migration, Chicago was still receiving

tens of thousands of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe. The groups competed with each

other for working class wages.

Though other techniques to maintain housing segregation had been used, by 1927 the political leaders of

Chicago began to adopt racially restrictive covenants. The Chicago Real Estate Board promoted a racially

restrictive covenant to YMCAs, churches, women's clubs, PTAs, Kiwanis clubs, chambers of commerce and

property owners' associations. At one point, as much as 80% of the city was included under restrictive

covenants.

The Supreme Court of the United States in Shelley v. Kraemer ruled in 1948 that racially restrictive

covenants were unconstitutional, but this did not quickly solve blacks' problems with finding adequate

housing. Homeowners' associations discouraged members from selling to black families, thus maintaining

residential segregation. There was also the pressure of European immigrants and their descendants.


In a succession common to most cities, as black families and new immigrants started to move in, more

established white residents moved out of certain neighborhoods to seek newer housing. The white

residents who had been in the city longest were the ones most likely to move to newer, most expensive

housing, as they could afford it. The early white residents (many Irish immigrants and their descendants)

on the South Side began to move away under pressure of new migrants and with newly expanding

housing opportunities after WWII. African Americans continued to move into the area, which had become

the black capital of the country. The South Side became predominantly black. The Black Belt was formed.

Housing

Between 1900 and 1910, the African-

American population rose rapidly in Chicago.

White hostility and population growth

combined to create the ghetto on the South

Side. In 1910 more than 75 percent of blacks

lived in predominantly black sections of the

city.

Chicago's Black Belt, April 1941.

The eight or nine neighborhoods that had been set as areas of black settlement in 1900 remained the

core of the Chicago African-American community. The Black Belt slowly expanded to accommodate the

growing population. As the population grew, African Americans became more confined to a delineated

area, instead of spreading throughout the city. When blacks moved into mixed neighborhoods, ethnic

white hostility grew. After fighting over the area, often whites left the area to be dominated by blacks.

This is one of the reasons the Black Belt region started.

The Black Belt of Chicago was the chain of neighborhoods on the South Side of Chicago where three-

quarters of the city's African American population lived by the mid-20th century. The Black Belt was an

area of aging, dilapidated housing that stretched 30 blocks along State Street on the South Side. It was

rarely more than seven blocks wide. The South Side Black Belt expanded in only two directions in the

twentieth century - south and east. The Black Belt also contained zones related to economic status. The

poorest blacks lived in the northernmost, oldest section of the black belt, while the elite resided in the

southernmost section. In the mid-1900s, blacks began slowly moving up to better positions in the work

force. During this time, Chicago was the capital of Black America. Many African Americans who moved to

the Black Belt area of Chicago were from the Black Belt in the Southeastern region of the United States.

Immigration to Chicago was another pressure of overcrowding, as primarily lower-class newcomers from

rural Europe also sought cheap housing and working class jobs. More and more people tried to fit into

converted "kitchenette" and basement apartments. Living conditions in the Black Belt resembled

conditions in the West Side ghetto or in the stockyards district. Although there were decent homes in the

black sections, the core of the Black Belt was a slum. A 1934 census estimated that black households

contained 6.8 people on average, whereas white households contained 4.7. Many blacks lived in

apartments that lacked plumbing, with only one bathroom for each floor. With the buildings so

overcrowded, building inspections and garbage collection were below the minimum mandatory

requirements for healthy sanitation. This unhealthiness increased the threat of disease. From 1940-1960,

the infant death rate in the Black Belt was 16% higher than the rest of the city.


Crime in African-American neighborhoods was a low priority to the police. Associated with problems of

poverty and southern culture, rates of violence and homicide were high. Some women resorted to

prostitution to survive. Both low life and middle class strivers were concentrated in a small area.

In 1946, the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) tried to ease the pressure in the overcrowded ghettos and

proposed to put public housing sites in less congested areas in the city. The white residents did not take

to this very well, so city politicians forced the CHA to keep the status quo and develop high rise projects in

the Black Belt and on the West Side. Some of these became notorious failures. As industrial restructuring

in the 1950s and later led to massive job losses, residents changed from working class families to poor

families on welfare.

Culture

Between 1916 and 1920, almost 50,000 Black Southerners moved to Chicago, which profoundly shaped

the city's development. Growth increased even more rapidly after 1940. In particular, the new citizens

caused the growth of local churches, businesses and community organizations. A new musical culture

arose, fed by all the traditions along the Mississippi River. The population continued to increase with new

migrants, with the most arriving after 1940.

The black arts community in Chicago was especially

vibrant. The 1920s were the height of the Jazz Age,

but music continued as the heart of the community

for decades. Nationally renowned musicians rose

within the Chicago world. Along the Stroll, a bright-

light district on State Street, jazz greats like Louis

Armstrong headlined at nightspots including the Delux

Café.

Richard Wright, author

Black Chicagoans' literary output between 1925 and

1950 was also prolific, and rivaled that of the Harlem

Renaissance. Prominent writers included Richard

Wright, Willard Motley, William Attaway, Frank

Marshall Davis, St. Clair Drake, Horace R. Clayton, and Margaret Walker. In Chicago, black writers turned

away from the folk traditions embraced by Harlem Renaissance writers, instead adopting a grittier style of

"literary naturalism" to better depict life in the urban ghetto. The classic Black Metropolis, written by St.

Clair Drake and Horace R. Clayton, exemplified the style of the Chicago writers. Today it remains the most

detailed portrayal of Black Chicago in the 1930s and

1940s.

Business

Chicago’s black population developed a class structure

composed of a large number of domestic workers and

other manual laborers, along with a small, but growing,

contingent of middle-and-upper-class business and

professional elites. In 1929, black Chicagoans gained

access to city jobs, and expanded their professional class. Fighting job discrimination was a constant battle

for African Americans in Chicago, as foremen in various companies restricted the advancement of black

workers, which often kept them from earning higher wages. Then in the mid-20th century, blacks began

slowly moving up to better positions in the work force.


The migration expanded the market for African American business. "The most notable breakthrough in

black business came in the insurance field." There were four major insurance companies founded in

Chicago. Then, in the early twentieth century, service establishments took over. The African-American

market on State Street during this time consisted of barber shops, restaurants, pool rooms, saloons, and

beauty salons. African Americans used these trades to build their own communities. These shops gave the

blacks a chance to establish their families, earn money, and become an active part of the community.

Achievements

In the early 20th century many prominent African Americans were

Chicago residents, including Republican and later Democratic

congressman William L. Dawson (America’s most powerful black

politician) and boxing champion Joe Louis. America's most widely read

black newspaper, the Chicago Defender, was published there and

circulated in the South as well.

Joe Louis

After long efforts, in the late 1930s, workers organized across racial

lines to form the United Meatpacking Workers of America. By then,

the majority of workers in Chicago's plants were black, but they

succeeded in creating an interracial organizing committee. It

succeeded in organizing unions both in Chicago and Omaha, the city

with the second largest meatpacking industry. This union belonged to the Congress of Industrial

Organizations (CIO), which was more progressive than the American Federation of Labor. They succeeded

in lifting segregation of job positions. For a time, workers achieved living wages and other benefits,

leading to blue collar middle-class life for decades. Some blacks were also able to move up the ranks to

supervisory and management positions. The CIO also succeeded in organizing Chicago's steel industry.

Blacks began to win elective office in local and state government.

The first blacks had been elected to office in Chicago in the late

19th c., decades before the Great Migrations.

And in 2008, another resident of the South Side, Barack Hussein

Obama, was elected the first African-American President of the

United States.

President Barack Obama


AFROCENTRISM

Afrocentrism or Afrocentricity is a world view that emphasizes the importance of African people in

culture, philosophy, and history. Fundamental to Afrocentrism is the assumption that approaching

knowledge from a Eurocentrist perspective, as well as certain mainstream assumptions in the application

of information in the West, has led to injustices and also to inadequacies in meeting the needs of black

Africans and the peoples of the African diaspora.

Afrocentrists commonly contend that Eurocentrism has led to the neglect

or denial of the contributions of African people and focused instead on a

generally European-centered model of world civilization and history.

Therefore, Afrocentrism is a paradigm shift from a European-centered

history to an African-centered history. More broadly, Afrocentrism is

concerned with distinguishing African achievements apart from the

influence of European peoples. Some Western mainstream scholars have

assessed some Afrocentric ideas as pseudohistorical, especially claims

regarding Ancient Egypt as contributing directly to the development of

Greek and Western culture. Contemporary Afrocentrists may view the movement as multicultural rather

than ethnocentric. According to US professor Victor Oguejiofor Okafor, concepts of Afrocentricity lie at

the core of the disciplines such as African American Studies.

History

Afrocentrism developed first as an argument among leaders and intellectuals in the Western Hemisphere.

It arose following social changes in the United States and Africa due both to the end of slavery and

expansion of British Colonialism. Modern Afrocentricity has its origins in the work of African and African

diaspora intellectuals in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

By the late 19th century, the United Kingdom had become a superpower. Throughout the century, British

and French governments, travelers, scholars, artists and writers increasingly turned their attentions to

Africa and the Near East as places of exploration (both physical and intellectual), settlement, exploitation

of new resources, and playing out of their longstanding rivalries. They completed the Suez Canal in 1869,

simplifying ship passage between Europe and the Far East. Based on their self-appraisal of the value of

technology, industrialization, Western infrastructure, and culture, these European nations assumed their

superiority to the peoples and cultures they encountered in Africa.

19th and early 20th century

Edward Wilmot Blyden, an Americo-Liberian educator and diplomat active in the pan-Africa movement,

perceived a change in perception taking place among Europeans towards Africans in his 1908 book African

Life and Customs, which originated as a series of articles in the Sierra Leone Weekly News. In it, he

proposed that Africans were beginning to be seen simply as different and not as inferior, in part because

of the work of English writers such as Mary Kingsley and Lady Lugard, who traveled and studied in Africa.

Such an enlightened view was fundamental to refute prevailing ideas among Western peoples about

African cultures and Africans.

Blyden used that standpoint to show how the traditional social, industrial, and economic life of Africans

untouched by "either European or Asiatic influence," was different and complete in itself, with its own

organic wholeness. In a letter responding to Blyden's original series of articles, Fante journalist and

politician J.E. Casely Hayford commented: "It is easy to see the men and women who walked the banks of

the Nile" passing him on the streets of Kumasi. Hayford suggested building a University to preserve


African identity and instincts. In that university, the history chair would teach:

“Universal history, with particular reference to the part Ethiopia has played in the affairs of the

world. I would lay stress upon the fact that while Ramses II was dedicating temples to 'the God of

gods, and secondly to his own glory,' the God of the Hebrews had not yet appeared unto Moses

in the burning bush; that Africa was the cradle of the world's systems and philosophies, and the

nursing mother of its religions. In short, that Africa has nothing to be ashamed of in its place

among the nations of the earth. I would make it possible for this seat of learning to be the means

of revising erroneous current ideas regarding the African; of raising him in self-respect; and of

making him an efficient co-worker in the uplifting of man to nobler effort.”

The exchange of ideas between Blyden and Hayford embodied the fundamental concepts of Afrocentrism.

A 1911 copy of the NAACP journal The Crisis depicting an Afrocentric artist's

interpretation of "Ra-Maat-Neb, one of the kings of the Upper Nile"

In the United States, writers and editors of publications such as The

Crisis and The Journal of Negro History sought to counter the

prevailing view that Sub-Saharan Africa had contributed nothing of

value to human history that was not the result of incursions by

Europeans and Arabs. Authors in these journals theorized that

Ancient Egyptian civilization was the culmination of events arising

from the origin of the human race in Africa. They investigated the

history of Africa from that perspective.

Afrocentrists claimed The Mis-Education of the Negro (1933) by Carter G. Woodson, an African- American

historian, as one of their foundational texts. Woodson critiqued education of African Americans as]"mis-

education" because he held that it denigrated the black while glorifying the white. For these early

Afrocentrists, the goal was to break what they saw as a vicious cycle of the reproduction of black self-

abnegation. In the words of The Crisis editor W.E.B. Du Bois, the world left African Americans with a

"double consciousness," and a sense of "always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of

measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity."

In his early years, W.E.B. Du Bois researched West African cultures and attempted to construct a

pan-Africanist value system based on West African traditions. In the 1950s, Du Bois envisioned and

received funding from Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah to produce an Encyclopedia Africana to

chronicle the history and cultures of Africa. Du Bois died before being able to complete his work. Some

aspects of Du Bois's approach are evident in work by Cheikh Anta Diop in the 1950s and 1960s.

Du Bois inspired a number of authors, including Drusilla Dunjee Houston. After reading his work The

Negro (1915), Houston embarked upon writing her Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empire

(1926). The book was a compilation of evidence related to the historic origins of Cush and Ethiopia, and

assessed their influences on Greece.


1960s and 1970s

The 1960s and 1970s were times of social and political ferment which gave rise in the U.S. to the Black

Nationalist, Black Power and Black Arts Movements, all driven to some degree by a rejection of Western

values and an identification with "Mother Africa." Afrocentric scholars and black youth also challenged

Eurocentric ideas in academia. 1968 signaled a new era in student unrest in the U.S. when Howard

University became the first major university to be shut down by student protests, in part over demands

for a more Afrocentric orientation of the institution.

The work of Cheikh Anta Diop became very influential. In the

following decades, histories related to Africa and the diaspora

gradually would incorporate a more African perspective. Since that

time, Afrocentrists have increasingly seen African peoples as the

makers and shapers of their own histories.

You have all heard of the African Personality; of African democracy,

of the African way to socialism, of negritude, and so on. They are

all props we have fashioned at different times to help us get on our

feet again. Once we are up we shan't need any of them anymore.

But for the moment it is in the nature of things that we may need

to counter racism with what Jean-Paul Sartre has called an anti-

racist racism, to announce not just that we are as good as the next

man but that we are much better.

—Chinua Achebe, 1965

Tejumola Olaniyan writes that Chinua Achebe easily might have included Afrocentrism in his list of

"props." In this context, ethnocentric Afrocentrism was not intended to be essential or permanent. It was

a consciously fashioned strategy of resistance to the Eurocentrism of the time. Afrocentric scholars

adopted two approaches: a deconstructive rebuttal of what they called "the whole archive of European

ideological racism" and a reconstructive act of writing new self-constructed histories.

Some Afrocentric writers focused on study of indigenous African civilizations and peoples, to emphasize

African history separate from European or Arab influence.

1980s and 1990s

In the 1980s and 1990s, Afrocentrism increasingly became seen as a tool for addressing social ills and a

means of grounding community efforts toward self-determination and political and economic

empowerment.

In his (1992) article "Eurocentrism vs. Afrocentrism", US anthropologist Linus A. Hoskins wrote:

The vital necessity for African people to use the weapons of education and history to extricate

themselves from this psychological dependency complex/syndrome as a necessary precondition

for liberation. [...] If African peoples (the global majority) were to become Afrocentric

(Afrocentrized), ... that would spell the ineluctable end of European global power and

dominance. This is indeed the fear of Europeans. ... Afrocentrism is a state of mind, a particular

subconscious mind-set that is rooted in the ancestral heritage and communal value system.


Although Afrocentricity is often associated with liberal or

left-wing politics, the movement is not homogeneous. During

the 1980s and 1990s, sociological research became

increasingly preoccupied with the problem of the "black

underclass." Some Afrocentric scholars began to frame

Afrocentric values as a remedy for what they perceived to be

the social ills of poor African Americans. American educator

Jawanza Kunjufu made the case that hip hop culture, rather

than being creative expression of the culture, was the root of

many social ills. For some Afrocentrists, the contemporary

problems of the ghetto stemmed not from race and class

inequality, but rather from a failure to inculcate black youth

with Afrocentric values.

Afrocentric ideas also received a considerable boost from the

cultural shift known as postmodernism and its privileging of

difference, micro-struggles, and the politics of identity. Postmodernism's general assault on the authority

and universalist claims of Western "culture" is also a mainstay in many Afrocentric agendas. In turn,

postmodern pluralism has begun to permeate Afrocentric thought.

In the West and elsewhere, the European, in the midst of other peoples, has often propounded

an exclusive view of reality; the exclusivity of this view creates a fundamental human crisis. In

some cases, it has created cultures arrayed against each other or even against themselves.

Afrocentricity’s response certainly is not to impose its own particularity as a universal, as

Eurocentricity has often done. But hearing the voice of African American culture with all of its

attendant parts is one way of creating a more sane society and one model for a more humane

world. -Asante, M. K. (1988)

By the end of the 1990s, the ethnocentric Afrocentrism of the '50s, '60s and '70s had largely fallen out of

favor. In 1997, US cultural historian Nathan Glazer described Afrocentricity as a form of multiculturalism.

He wrote that its influence ranged from sensible proposals about inclusion of more African material in

school curricula to what he called senseless claims about African primacy in all major technological

achievements. Glazer argued that Afrocentricity had become more important due to the failure of

mainstream society to assimilate all African Americans. Anger and frustration at their continuing

separation gave black Americans the impetus to reject traditions that excluded them.

Many Afrocentrists continue to challenge concepts such as white privilege, so-called color-blind

perspectives, and race-neutral pedagogies. There are now strong ties between Afrocentricity and Critical

Race Theory.


Contemporary

Today, Afrocentricity takes many forms, including serving as a tool for creating a more multicultural and

balanced approach to the study of history and sociology. Afrocentricity contends that race still exists as a

social and political construct. It argues that for centuries in academia,

Eurocentric ideas about history were dominant: ideas such as blacks having no

civilizations, no written languages, no cultures, and no histories of any note

before coming into contact with Europeans. Further, according to the views of

some Afrocentrists, European history has commonly received more attention

within the academic community than the history of sub-Saharan African

cultures or those of the many Pacific Island peoples. Afrocentrists contend it is

important to divorce the historical record from past racism. Molefi Kete

Asante's book Afrocentricity (1988) argues that African-Americans should look

to African cultures "as a critical corrective to a displaced agency among

Africans." Less concerned about specific claims about the race of the Egyptians

or other controversial topics, some Afrocentrists believe that the burden of

Afrocentricity is to define and develop African agency in the midst of the

cultural wars debate. By doing so, Afrocentricity can support all forms of multiculturalism.

Afrocentrists argue that Afrocentricity is important for people of all ethnicities who want to understand

African history and the African diaspora. For example, the Afrocentric method can be used to research

African indigenous culture. Queeneth Mkabela writes in 2005 that the Afrocentric perspective provides

new insights for understanding African indigenous culture, in a multicultural context. According to

Mkabela and others, the Afrocentric method is a necessary part of complete scholarship and without it,

the picture is incomplete, less accurate, and less objective.

Studies of African and African-diaspora cultures have shifted understanding and

created a more positive acceptance of influence by African religious, linguistic

and other traditions, both among scholars and the general public. For example

Lorenzo Dow Turner's seminal 1949 study of the Gullah language, a dialect

spoken by black communities in Georgia and South Carolina, demonstrated that

its idiosyncrasies were not simply incompetent command of English, but

incorporated West African linguistic characteristics in vocabulary, grammar,

sentence structure, and semantic system. Likewise, religious movements such as

Vodou (Voodoo) are now less likely to be characterized as "mere superstition,"

but understood in terms of links to African traditions. Scholars who adopt such

approaches may or may not see their work as Afrocentrist in orientation.

In recent years Africana Studies or Africology departments at many major universities have grown out of

the Afrocentric "Black Studies" departments formed in the 1970s. Rather than focusing on black topics in

the African diaspora (often exclusively African American topics), these reformed departments aim to

expand the field to encompass all of the African diaspora. They also seek to better align themselves with

other university departments and find continuity and compromise between the radical Afrocentricity of

the past decades and the multicultural scholarship found in many fields today.


ESSAY TOPICS AND REVIEW QUESTIONS

1. In literature, as in life, a character may search for a better way of life. Show how two characters from

A Raisin in the Sun are searching for a better way of life. Explain what each character is hoping to gain

through this search and discuss the ways in which each character attempts to bring about a change in his

or her life.

2. Discuss the ways in which the setting of Raisin has a profound effect upon two of the characters.

3. If people can be divided into three groups--those who make things happen, those who watch things

happen, and those who wonder what happened--apply each of these to the three characters in Raisin

who respectively prove that this is so.

4. Often, pressure from other people or from outside forces might compel a person to take an action

that he or she might not have taken ordinarily. Discuss a character from Raisin who was pressured into

taking an action that he or she might not have taken on his or her own.

5. Show how Raisin deals with the generation gap--the problems that the older generation has in dealing

with the younger generation and vice versa.

6. Discuss the ways in which two characters in Raisin have made adjustments to negative aspects of

their environment. These adjustments might be to the character's physical surroundings, to other people,

or to the customs and traditions of the society in which they live.

7. Sometimes something as seemingly trivial as a meeting or a conversation between two people can

have a lasting effect upon the life of one or even of both of them. Discuss how either a seemingly

unimportant meeting or a casual conversation brings about a significant change in the life of one of the

characters in Raisin.

8. Sometimes in one work of literature, we might find two characters who contrast markedly from one

another. Discuss two characters from Raisin who are the opposite of each other in their views, beliefs,

and philosophy of life.

9. In literature, as in life, a character might feel trapped. Discuss a character from Raisin who feels

trapped and give examples of the ways in which this character chooses to deal with those feelings.

10. Discuss a character from Raisin who changes significantly, telling specifically of the forces that bring

about this change. How does this character relate to the other characters before the change and how

does this character relate to the other characters after the change?

11. Most people define loneliness as being alone, but a person might experience loneliness even when

surrounded by other people. A person can be lonely if his/her ideas, feelings, or circumstances are

different from those around them. Discuss a character from Raisin who experiences loneliness because of

the differences in his/her ideas, feelings, or circumstances.

12. Often, in life, a situation may reach a "point of no return"--the point after which the life of a person

can never be the same. Describe such a turning point for a character in Raisin.

13. Add another ending to the already existing ending of Raisin. Describe what you think happens next--

after the Youngers have left their Southside Chicago apartment and have moved into their new house.


You might write a composition or you may wish to continue in Hansberry's genre, using the dialogue of

the characters to show your plot.

14. Noting Lorraine Hansberry's unique writing style, compare Walter Lee's imitation of a subservient,

stereotypical begging "darky," (the heartbreaking speech he plans to deliver to Lindner in order to regain

the lost money) with the speech that Walter Lee actually gives when Lindner arrives. How are they

different in language? What is Hansberry's point in having Walter Lee practice one speech and then say

something completely different?

15. After reading a full-length biography of Langston Hughes, show how he might have had a profound

effect on Lorraine Hansberry's writing of A Raisin in the Sun.

16. After reading a full-length biography of Lorraine Hansberry, discuss the ways in which events of her

own life are interwoven into her play A Raisin in the Sun.

17. Research the following events of 1955 and tell how each might have contributed to Lorraine

Hansberry's political philosophy: the arrest of Rosa Parks; Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka; and the

murder of Emmett Till.

18. In order to be more aware of the historical events surrounding the opening of Raisin on Broadway,

summarize the headlines of The New York Times for March 11, 1959 (the date Raisin opened on

Broadway); also summarize a full-length article from Life magazine for that week; and summarize an

article from Ebony magazine for that month.

QUOTES

Quote 1: "Weariness has, in fact, won in this room. Everything has been polished, washed, sat on, used,

scrubbed too often. All pretenses but living itself have long since vanished from the very atmosphere of

this room" Act 1, Scene 1, pg. 3

Quote 2: "Check coming today?" Act 1, Scene 1, pg. 6

Quote 3: "Now - whose little old angry man are you?" Act 1, Scene 1, pg. 11

Quote 4: "Yeah. You see, this little liquor store we got in mind cost seventy-five thousand and we figured

the initial investment on the place be 'bout thirty thousand, see. That be ten thousand each... Baby, don't

nothing happen for you in this world 'less you pay somebody off!" Act 1, Scene 1, pg. 14-15

Quote 5: "We one group of men tied to a race of women with small minds." Act 1, Scene 1, pg. 17

Quote 6: "a woman who has adjusted to many things in life and overcome many more, her face is full of

strength. She has, we can see, wit and faith of a kind that keep her eyes lit and full of interest and

expectancy. She is, in a word, a beautiful woman. Her bearing is perhaps most like the noble bearing of

the women of the Hereros of Southwest Africa - rather as if she imagines that as she walks she still bears a

basket or a vessel upon her head." Act 1, Scene 1, pg. 22


Quote 7: "Mama, something is happening between Walter and me. I don't know what it is - but he needs

something - something I can't give him any more. He needs this chance, Lena." Act 1, Scene 1, pg. 25

Quote 8: "Big Walter used to say, he'd get right wet in the eyes sometimes, lean his head back with the

water standing in his eyes and say, 'Seem like God didn't see fit to give the black man nothing but dreams

- but He did give us children to make them dreams seem worth while.'" Act 1, Scene 1, pg. 29

Quote 9: "The Murchisons are honest-to-God-real-live-rich-colored people, and the only people in the

world who are more snobbish than rich white people are rich colored people. I thought everybody knew

that." Act 1, Scene 1, pg. 34

Quote 10: "In my mother's house there is still God." Act 1, Scene 1, pg. 37

Quote 11: "Now I ain't saying what I think. But I ain't never been wrong 'bout a woman neither." Act 1,

Scene 2, pg. 41

Quote 12: "Assimilationism is so popular in your country." Act 1, Scene 2, pg. 48

Quote 13: "When a man goes outside his home to look for peace." Act 1, Scene 2, pg. 60

Quote 14: "Something has changed. You something new, boy. In my time we was worried about not being

lynched and getting to the North if we could and how to stay alive and still have a pinch of dignity

too...Now here come you and Beneatha - talking 'bout things we ain't never even thought about hardly,

me and your daddy. You ain't satisfied or proud of nothing we done. I mean that you had a home; that we

kept you out of trouble till you was grown; that you don't have to ride to work on the back of nobody's

streetcar - You my children - but how different we done become." Act 1, Scene 2, pg. 62

Quote 15: "Oh, it's just a college girl's way of calling people Uncle Toms - but that isn't what it means at

all." Act 2, Scene 1, pg. 72

Quote 16: "I see you all the time - with the books tucked under your arms - going to your (British A - a

mimic) 'clahsses.' And for what! What the hell you learning over there? Filling up your heads - (Counting

off on his fingers) - with the sociology and the psychology - but they teaching you how to be a man? How

to take over and run the world? They teaching you how to run a rubber plantation or a steel mill? Naw -

just to talk proper and read books and wear white shoes..." Act 2, Scene 1, pg. 76

Quote 17: "What you need me to say you done right for? You the head of this family. You run our lives like

you want to. It was your money and you did what you wanted with it. So what you need for me to say it

was all right for? So you butchered up a dream of mine - you - who always talking 'bout your children's

dreams..." Act 2, Scene 1, pg. 87

Quote 18: "And from now on any penny that come out of it or that go in it is for you to look after. For you

to decide. It ain't much, but it's all I got in the world and I'm putting in your hands. I'm telling you to be

head of this family from now on like you supposed to be." Act 2, Scene 2, pg. 94

Quote 19: "Girl, I do believe you are the first person in the history of the entire human race to successfully

brainwash yourself." Act 2, Scene 3, pg. 98

Quote 20: "Well - I don't understand why you people are reacting this way. What do you think you are

going to gain by moving into a neighborhood where you just aren't wanted and where some elements -

well - people can get awful worked up when they feel that their whole way of life and everything they've


ever worked for is threatened...You just can't force people to change their hearts, son." Act 2, Scene 3, pg.

105-6

Quote 21: "He talked Brotherhood. He said everybody ought to learn how to sit down and hate each other

with good Christian fellowship." Act 2, Scene 3, pg. 107

Quote 22: "I seen...him...night after night...come in...and look at that rug...and then look at me...the red

showing in his eyes...the veins moving in his head...I seen him grow thin and old before he was

forty...working and working and working like somebody's old horse...killing himself...and you - you give it

all away in a day..." Act 2, Scene 3, pg. 117

Quote 23: "I live the answer! (pause) In my village at home it is the exceptional man who can even read a

newspaper...or who ever sees a book at all. I will go home and much of what I will have to say will seem

strange to the people of my village...But I will teach and work and things will happen, slowly and swiftly.

At times it will seem that nothing changes at all...and then again...the sudden dramatic events which

make history leap into the future. And then quiet again. Retrogression even. Guns, murder, revolution.

And I even will have moments when I wonder if the quiet was not better than all that death and hatred.

But I will look about my village at the illiteracy and disease and ignorance and I will not wonder long. And

perhaps...perhaps I will be a great man...I mean perhaps I will hold on to the substance of truth and find

my way always with the right course..." Act 3, pg. 124

Quote 24: "Sometimes you just got to know when to give up some things...and hold on to what you got."

Act 3, pg. 130

Quote 25: "There is always something left to love. And if you ain't learned that, you ain't learned nothing."

Act 3, pg. 135

Quote 26: "He finally come into his manhood today, didn't he? Kind of like a rainbow after the rain..." Act

3, pg. 141


RESOURCES

Quotes from the Play

http://www.bookrags.com/notes/rai/QUO.html

Lesson Plans

Excellent lesson plan for RAISIN

http://teacherweb.sewanhaka.k12.ny.us/~bdiscala/

Great lesson plan for extending the play.

http://edsitement.neh.gov/view_lesson_plan.asp?id=449

Loads of lesson plans for RAISIN

http://www.lessonplanet.com/search?keywords=a+raisin+in+the+sun&rating=3

Lorraine Hansberry

Biography

http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/LitNote/A-Raisin-in-the-Sun-About-the-Author.id-150,pageNum-1.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorraine_Hansberry

Lorraine Hansberry Quotes

http://womenshistory.about.com/od/quotes/a/hansberry.htm

Lorraine Hansberry Theatre

http://www.lhtsf.org/

Afrocentricity

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrocentrism

Molefi Kete Asante’s work and books

http://www.asante.net/books.html

African American Chicago

History of African Americans in Chicago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_African_Americans_in_Chicago

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/african/afam011.html

Great Migration

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Migration_(African_American)

African American Literature – Chicago Writers

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/926640/African-American-literature/232361/Chicago-writers

DuSable Museum of African American History

http://www.dusablemuseum.org/

Documents

Raisin Teachers Guide