roadway audience, no commercial chance for success of a serious black play, and no significant white audience for a play about African Americans, it turned out to be an all-out commercial and critical success. For her efforts, unknown 29-year-old playwright Lorraine Hansberry won the Best Play of the Year Award from the New York Drama Critics, the first black author and only the fifth woman to do so. It marks the first time that blacks were portrayed in a realistic and extremely humanistic way. In A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry paints an impressive group portrait of the Youngers, a family composed of powerful individuals who are in many ways typical in their dreams and frustrations. Hans berry seems to have been ahead of her time in attacking the very issues that would soon become the widespread issues in the '60s and become central themes in the national view. She saw the surge of African American pride, the "black is beautiful" ideal that would become so important in the '60s, the old battles over integration and equality. While A Raisin in the Sun is very much rooted in its time period, it has also proven to be for all time. Its relevance to modern life is is enforced by the fact that it has continued over three and a half decades to be given important and innovative new productions. It has established itself as an American classic, which is somewhat amazing considering the conditions of the civil rights movement at the time of its production.Civil rights became a national issue and made a leap forward, but without its failures and faltering. Through theatre, though, Hansberry gave hope that America and African Americans could strive together. It led on, with hope, to the civil rights movement of the 1960s....
