Lorraine Hansberry termed her best work, and 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 1968–69 season. It appeared in book form the following year under the title "To Be Young, Gifted and Black: Lorraine Hansberry in Her Own Words". She left behind an unfinished novel and several other plays, including "The Drinking Gourd" and "What Use Are Flowers?", with a range of content, from slavery to a post-apocalyptic future. "Raisin", a musical based on "A Raisin in the Sun," opened in New York in 1973,
A Raisin in the Sun a bombing. Her lines are employed as comic relief, but Hansberry also uses this scene to mock those who are too scared to stand up for their rights. In the introduction by Robert B. Nemiroff he writes that the scene is included in print because it draws attention away from a seemingly happy ending to a more violent reality inspired by Hansberry's own experiences. Experiences in this play echo a lawsuit ("Hansberry v. Lee", 311 U.S. 32 (1940)), to which the playwright Lorraine Hansberry's family was a party when they fought to have their day in court because a previous