Lorraine Hansberry Lorraine Hansberry Lorraine Vivian Hansberry (May 19, 1930 – January 12, 1965) was an African-American playwright and writer. Hansberry was the first black female author to have a play performed on Broadway. Her best known work, the play "A Raisin in the Sun", highlights the lives of Black Americans living under racial segregation in Chicago. Hansberry's family had struggled against segregation, challenging a restrictive covenant and eventually provoking the Supreme Court case "Hansberry v. Lee". The title of the play was taken from the poem "Harlem" by Langston Hughes: "What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like
The Sun in a Net and "Golden Gate" ("Zlatá brána"). A highly likely source of the central theme was the 95% solar eclipse that occurred in Central Europe on Feb. 15, 1961. Additional inspiration for the symbolic construction of the storyline may have come from ancient solar myths that have been available in Europe in increasingly numerous publications since at least 1865. A specific myth of the Sun in a net was brought from Polynesia, more general myths of catching the Sun have been attributed to the pre-Columbian Americas, some of the published solar myths may date back to Indo-European prehistory. Associations with Sol Invictus