To Be Young, Gifted and Black (play) which she eventually died at 34. The play was well received and was one of the most successful plays off-Broadway during the 1968–1969 season. The play is still anthologized and performed around the world. The autobiography adapted from the play was also critically acclaimed. To Be Young, Gifted and Black (play) "To Be Young, Gifted and Black: Lorraine Hansberry in her Own Words", was written by Lorraine Hansberry, an American writer best known for her 1957 play "A Raisin in the Sun", a play that made Hansberry the first black author of a show on Broadway. After her death in
A Raisin in the Sun was so low among white buyers that Mr. Hansberry may have been the only prospective purchaser available. Lorraine reflects upon the litigation in her book "To Be Young, Gifted, and Black": "Twenty-five years ago, [my father] spent a small personal fortune, his considerable talents, and many years of his life fighting, in association with NAACP attorneys, Chicago’s ‘restrictive covenants’ in one of this nation's ugliest ghettos. That fight also required our family to occupy disputed property in a hellishly hostile ‘white neighborhood’ in which literally howling mobs surrounded our house. ... My memories of this ‘correct’ way of fighting white