A Raisin in the Sun the Sun" was the first play written by a black woman to be produced on Broadway, as well as the first with a black director, Mr. Richards. Hansberry noted that her play introduced details of black life to the overwhelmingly white Broadway audiences, while director Richards observed that it was the first play to which large numbers of black people were drawn. Frank Rich, writing in "The New York Times" in 1983, stated that "A Raisin in the Sun" "changed American theater forever." In 2016, Claire Brennan wrote in "The Guardian" that "The power and craft of the writing make
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