Harlem
When playwright/screenwriter Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965) was a 17-year-old student at the University of Wisconsin—Madison she walked into a rehearsal of Sean O’Casey’s play Juno and the Paycock, and the struggles she saw onstage in the tenements of Dublin, Ireland resonated with the struggles she saw growing up in the rougher parts of South Side of Chicago.
And a scene where a mother laments the loss of her son in the Irish Civil War left Hannsberry stunned. That theatrical experience combined with her childhood experience of moving into an unwelcomed white neighborhood (that started with windows being broken, and ended in the landmark Hansberry v. Lee lawsuit) provided the seeds for her play A Raisin in the Sun (1959). The film version was released in 1961.
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