In Black America; Looking For Lorraine, with Dr. Imani Perry Part II

From the University of Texas at Austin, KUT Radio, this is In Black America. The easiest answer is that, you know, she's one of the most important writers and thinkers of the 20th century, and so her picture comes up in, you know, Black History Month, but we tend not to know a lot about her life. We see the movies, the play, you know, but we, the NSI think it's always useful to look to the past and to sort of see what visionaries in the past, how they approach doing works that haven't serious impact on people that help people imagine freedom because we have to continue to do that work. So I guess that's part of it, but it's also, you know, the book was an occasion for me to think about, like, how communities create artists and thinkers, you know, and so writing about her

and her interior life and her thinking, but also these people who shaped her and influenced her and the relationships. And I think nowadays we tend to be so kind of self-focused. In the Monty Perry, the U.S. Rogers Professor of African-American Studies at Princeton University, an author of Looking for Lorraine, the Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry, published by Beacon Press. In 1959, when a raised in the sun debuted on Broadway, the Lorraine Hansberry became the first African-American woman to have a play produced on Broadway. The play depicted an African-American family struggle on Chicago Southside as it tried to move into a white neighborhood. Surprisingly, the play mirror some of the circumstances had three grew up under while living on Chicago Southside. In a book looking for Lorraine Perry, uncovered the woman behind this iconic production. Hansberry, who died at the age of 34, was by all accounts ahead of her time.

She was a feminist of black nationalists and a prolific and probing artists. I'm Johnny Ohenson Jr. and welcome to another edition of In Black America. On this week's program, Looking for Lorraine, the Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry, with Dr. Monty Perry, part two, In Black America. It's such an honest portrait of black folks and our desires and our dreams and our frustrations and resilience and that's not dressed up. It's really honest and sincerely offered. I think we have a lot of beautiful art, but there's something about the clarity of that play that makes us stand out and the people. We know all those people now. We know every character. We are. I think that's what it is.

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past six decades, you know about a raise in the sun. The Broadway production opened at the Ethel Bear More Theater on Broadway in 1959. It was made more famous when the movie version was released a year later. Starting Sydney Portier is Walter Lee Young and Ruby D as his wife. Lorraine Hansberry was only 29 years old when the production opened. Hansberry Play is one of the most produced works by an African American playwright in this country. Dr. Monty Perry thought it was time to revisit this literary jewel that has been hidden in plain sight for decades. Although Hansberry life was short, it was full of extraordinary experiences and achievements. She had an unflinching commitment to social justice which brought her under FBI surveillance when she was barely in her 20s. Perry's book, Rock to Life, The Backstage Stories of His Multidimensional Artists and Playwright. On today's program, we conclude our conversation with noted African American Studies scholar, Dr. Amani Perry.

Lorraine came from somewhere that we can say a privileged class of African Americans. Her parents were college educated. They were. They were college educated. Her father was a real estate mogul. Her mother was involved in local politics. People who I've talked to or had interviews with who grew up around her. They were middle class but for black folks in the depression they were rich. They talked about the Hansberry's had money. That's what she came from. But they lived on the south side and often times lived in the same building as her father's tenants. So she wasn't separate from the larger black community. She came as a right in the middle of it. At some point Lorraine became compassionate about the conditions of African Americans during her time. What led her to that point in her life?

That's a great question. I think there are a couple of events that were really important. I think one is her uncle William Leo Hansberry, who was a professor at Howard, who really developed the field of African studies. He brought a lot of intellectuals and activists by their house and that had an influence on her. So sort of thinking about black politics more broadly. Of course like the Chicago defender, they're reading that all the time. There's like a whole kind of political world and she had a mentor who lived downstairs at one point who was an activist, who's Ray Hans-Burrow, no relation. They have a similar last name. Personally, I think the most poignant event was when she was an elementary school and her parents gave her a white fur coat for Christmas. She goes to school on that fur coat in the depression where other kids are hungry and they beat her up.

And in that moment, she talked about sharing their anger, like she understood how awful it was. And as opposed to just focusing on feeling like, you know, hurt, right? And she identified with the other kids in that moment. And I think that that was the moment really that kind of gave her her politics, gave her her commitments where she could see outside of her own experience to the larger black communities experience. As you say that, I'm thinking about when she decided to attend the university of Wisconsin as Madison, which was 180 from where she grew up in and having that experience with the coat and having to go to Madison, I've been to Madison, I'm quite sure. It's not a lot of stuff that black people can do in Madison, Wisconsin. No, no, and that, and you know, she integrated a dorm like they previous black students had been forced to live off campus.

And you know, her mother was like, no, we need, and they made her interview for that. Exactly. For them to decide it was acceptable to have a black young woman in the dorm. So yeah, it was totally different. And one thing that I think is amazing about her is that she struggled academically there. She was not really into school that much. Not into the academic part of school, but she flourished in terms of what she did. She became a campus activist, the president of the student progressive party. She got into theater productions. And she talked about race and racism there. She didn't stay, but I'm just, I was really impressed by how she sort of not just, you know, met the challenge of being there, but became a leader amongst, you know, white students in 1948, you know, it's really extraordinary. I think she found her, her way, she became an artist, but becoming an artist also took her to becoming a proficient writer, which she didn't really take real seriously at the beginning.

Yeah, you know, it's so, yeah, she, yeah, I think that's right. You know, she was, she started as a visual artist. And, you know, I think she never lost track of the visual. I mean, I think part of what's so special about playwright is they are paying attention to the words, but they're also thinking about the visual, like the performance in front of you. And she did these, I think she was very self-critical about her own plays, but I think she was really masterful at like putting together plays where you could see the motivation. And the feelings of all the characters and identify with all of them. You could feel what they were feeling even when they were at odds with each other. Yet she didn't, like it, it all felt very natural.

Like she, you would, you didn't think, oh, that's not what a real person would say, right? So they would talk like people really talked, and yet you got a full sense of who they were. And I do think that helped, it helped as she was imagining scenes, you know, interactions, not just sort of telling a story, but showing a story. Who were some of the writers that had a profound impact on her as a writer? Well, definitely Langston Hughes, Simone de Beauvoir, for playwright, Sean O'Kacey, Du Bois, I had an influence on her intellectually, and she studied his writing a lot. And he, you know, he's a mentor, really, you know, cared very deeply for her. And she does, you know, was so funny, she doesn't talk about Gwendolyn Brooks, but I think Gwendolyn Brooks was absolutely an influence on her. So I think in the way that she tried to detect life in Chicago and Chicago Kitchennet living, I just, you know, she didn't, she never acknowledged it explicitly, but I just, as someone who loves and reads a lot of Gwendolyn Brooks, I just see her influence on Hans Barry. I found it interesting after the African heir left her friendship with Malcolm X.

Yes. Yeah. I mean, she knew everybody, you know, and she, and I, I think that's really important because so many people don't think of her as militant, but really she was as militant. Yes, she was. Yes, as Malcolm and also the visual, because you know, he talked bad about her about her being married to a white man, and then she like, you know, fussed at him. And he apologized, and I have this visual in my mind, because she was this little tiny woman and Malcolm is like 63 and imposing it. I just imagined her, you know, fussing at him. And he's like, OK, I'm sorry, but rain, you know, I just, it's just such a sweet image. And I was so moved when I read about him showing up at her funeral, even though his own life was at risk. I just wept, you know, at that, you know, that. Do you, do you think her father's death in Mexico had an impact on her when she wrote a raise in the sun? I do. I think, I think one impact on her was that it's sort of a, it's complicated. I think on the one hand, it made her more tender to her father's position.

Like, you know, even though she didn't see things the same way, like he was very much into, you know, we got to fight the battle in the courts. And we have to be respectable, you know, who's a very, you know, real patriot like straight in there, a guy and she was talking about, you know, we should run to the hills with guns. You know, they were very different. But I think she saw his life and she saw how brilliant he was and how hard he worked and that at the end of his life, he was so frustrated by American racism. He was like, we're just going to go to Mexico. We're leaving this place. And I think that, I mean, that really shaped her, you know, the feeling that like, you know, he had done everything according to white America, the right way for getting equality. And he just saw it as intractable, you know, the country. So I think that had an impact on her. And I think it opened her up to really thinking about even though she had very strong convictions, kind of being sensitive to all the different ways that black people were trying to struggle, you know, even if they weren't the same as her own.

I found it interesting this week when they adjusted a report on the devaluation of black home ownership. And her dad, a lot of people don't know was the reason why they restricted covenants, what was stricken? Yeah, well, and it's, it was, you know, yeah, I mean, he has very little. The case that her dad brought when he purchased a home and a neighborhood that was supposed to be restricted for white folks, the case went all the way up to the Supreme Court. And they, you know, ultimately were able to occupy the home and, you know, that history. And the thing is that, you know, raising the sun is based on the history and part of her frustration with the way people saw the play, was she was like, at the end, when they move into the house, that's not a happy ending. Exactly. Because the white folks are going to be, you know, so violent, you know, she talks about being spat on and having objects that she almost was killed by a rock thrown through their window as a little girl.

Right. And so, you know, I think it's really important now to understand how all of the housing, history of housing discrimination is at the center of racial inequality. And black homes have been devalued because of the history of federal policy. Like, it wasn't something that just happened. Right. They made our homes worth less, you know, and she saw the importance of that. And I think it's really important, you know, you think about it was 1959 when it was showed up on Broadway. Right. It's been mixed with the civil rights movement and she was even then drawing attention to, okay, the issue is not just, you know, the segregation signs. You know, it's also all these other things, you know, where we can live, where, you know, people pushing us out responding by all those kinds of things. And the history has borne that out, you know.

Little people don't know what some do, but a song Nina Simone wrote was direct reflection of her love for Lorraine Hansberry. Yeah. And, you know, they were such, they were such good friends. And Nina Simone credited Lorraine Hansberry for getting her in the movement. Like she was like, you know, and she told, told this story about how, you know, she opened in Carnegie Hall and everybody was calling to congratulate her. But Lorraine called and said, okay, well, now what are you going to do for the movement? Right. That was a response. And that changed her life, obviously. And she talked about, she described Lorraine in many ways. It's like a teacher who brought, you know, encouraged her to read certain things and talk about ideas. But I think it went both ways. And it was actually an interview that one of Malcolm X's daughters, I tell us your boss did that made me start to really think about this. And she said, you know, everybody always talks about how Lorraine taught Nina, but Nina was brilliant. And she taught her as well. And I started to think about the way, you know, Nina Simone influence Lorraine as an artist too, you know, because she was such a master of bringing different ideas together.

Like composing something that had all these different kind of influences. And I think you can see that. And Lorraine has raised work after they became friends. So yeah, that that relationship was so close to you. And Nina Simone was devastated by her death. And then by Malcolm X's death three weeks later, you know, and that was really the beginning of some of her psychiatric challenges. Was that period of death, you know, right in May 63 Lorraine and some other black activists had to sit down with the attorney general Robert Kennedy and that didn't go over too well. No, didn't go too well. You know, because Robert Kennedy thought that he was going to call together these famous black people and they would tell black people in my hometown of Birmingham to calm down and stop all their protesting and go slow. And, you know, and everybody responded to that, you know, that that position negatively, you know, Lena Horn was like, you crazy if you think we're going to go tell black people not to protest.

And, you know, and Lorraine said the black people in Birmingham speak for us, but she was particularly angry that one of the people who came to the meeting who was an organizer from court Jerome Smith, who had been, you know, violently beaten in Mississippi. And, and, and had, you know, really been in the throes of the struggle when Robert F. Kennedy tried to kind of dismiss and ignore him. And she was like, no, no, no, that's the person you need to listen to. You know, she really rejected this idea that you only listen to the fancy Negroes, right. And that became, you know, the basis for her to really kind of go in on RFK and then say we want a moral commitment and support of civil rights from the Kennedy administration. If you're just joining us, I'm Johnny Johansson, Jr. and you're listening to in black America from KUT radio and we're speaking with Dr. Monty Perry, the use Roger's professor of African American Studies at Princeton University and author of Looking for Lorraine, the radiant and radical life of Lorraine Hansberry.

Miss Hansberry was ahead of her time in a lot of different areas. Tell us about those areas. Yeah, I mean, so one is that she saw herself as a feminist. She, you know, she, what's really interesting is like, so do everybody thinks about James Baldwin and she was such good friends. And people think of James Baldwin as a gay writer. What's interesting is that although he had, you know, we had relationships with men, he didn't ever really accept the label. Hansberry actually talked about herself as being a lesbian and trying to think through what that meant politically, even though she wasn't out because, you know, wasn't, you know, wasn't a safe time to be out. But she was talking about issues of sexuality. She was talking about issues of gender. She was also thinking a lot about, you know, anti-colonialist movement, you know, the future of Africa.

So she almost like she was in the 50s in some ways where organizations like the Black Panther Party were in the late 60s and 70s on a lot of issues. And I think so she was ahead of her time, but a lot of that had to do with the influence of people like Paul Robes and W. E. B. Du Bois and Langston Hughes, who were such, you know, sophisticated political thinkers. They thought about things internationally, you know, they were, you know, they really had these big political imaginations. So it's almost like she was a bridge between an older and younger generation on so many issues. A couple of more questions, Dr. Perry. Why is it significant in your opinion that we celebrate the rainhandsberry? Well, I guess I think, I mean, I think the easiest answer is that, you know, she's one of the most important writers and thinkers of the 20th century. And so her picture comes out up in, you know, Black Isherima, but we tend not to know a lot about her life, you know, we see the movies, the play, you know, but we'd, I think it's always useful to look to the past and to sort of see what visionaries of the past, how they approach doing work that had a serious impact on people that help people imagine freedom because we have to continue to do that work.

So I guess that's part of it, but it's also, you know, the book was an occasion for me to think about like how communities create artists and thinkers, you know, and so writing about her and her interior life and her thinking, but also these people who shaped her and influenced her and the relationships. I think nowadays we tend to be so kind of self focused and so like everybody holds things close to their chest and they're competing with each other, but we have, you know, you don't get to that kind of work unless you're in community, unless you're in conversation, unless you learn from other people. And so I guess I want that to be the lesson of her life too.

Were there any aha moments when you were doing the research? That's such an interesting question. I mean, I had, in some ways, there were, there were so, so many of them. I don't know. And, you know, like it, and they, they came about, you know, so sometimes there, like there would be, there were, there are these fascinating moments like, you know, where, like I'm learning about her being engaged with to a, a black man in Harlem before marrying Robert Nemuroff, right? Right. And that, you know, that story was really interesting to think about how her life unfolded in a way nobody had talked about. You're talking about Rosie? Yes. Rosie. And how, you know, he was, he was gorgeous and he was an activist and he was like the super charismatic person and it gave me an insight into her. So, you know, she loved beauty and elegance and charisma, you know, the way Baldwin had written about her, he was like, oh, she was so committed to this struggle. She didn't care about fame.

And then I was in her papers and actually she did, you know, she, she wanted to be famous. If she liked the live light, you, she liked being listened to. I mean, not more than she was committed to ideas. But, and then I, you know, I had this moment when it was very emotional for me to go to the place where she, where she spent her last days, you know, to go to her home and upstate New York and to go to her grave site. And to think about, you know, the challenges for her of trying to write through her physical illness and trying to do work that was meaningful for the movement. And the combination between wanting to be out there and her body shutting down and the, the kind of private space she needed to write and how she sort of struggled with all of that. It was, it was an aha moment for me because I just, you know, I think for me personally because I think a lot about someone who has chronic diseases, like how do you balance, you know, the limitations of your body. But it's also that's just such a human thing, you know, we all are working through constraint and difficulty and hardship and we're trying to do something meaningful and we're always limited or most of us anyway.

And I, you know, not for me, it made me feel like this is some of the stuff is universal and we all can learn from it, you know. And that was an aha moment, like it wasn't she's very special, but she's also just human in a way that we're all human, you know. When you teach your students in class, are you trying to convey to them the passion in which I can hear from your voice about literature and learning. I would say the back stories of these individuals who have have profoundly affected what we read and learn about society. I do, you know, because I always want, you know, students, you know, part of the work is, you know, learning how to make an argument, learning how to do research, learning how to write a paper. But I also think part of the work of education is learning how to live a meaningful life.

And part of the way you do that is to look at examples of lives lived, right. And so I always try to make space for them to have like personal recordings or transformations in the midst of learning information, you know, or research. And realize that they're, you know, one of the weird things about colleges and universities is that in the classroom, we so often act like students aren't whole people, you know. But they are, you know, they're living, breathing, complicated people, and we're all there trying to pursue knowledge together. And I want, so I like for the classroom to be honest about that, you know, and to be caring about that, you know, that said, you know, I don't let my classroom, you know, sometimes students just want to tell all their business and go do that. But, you know, the emotional and intellectual do have to work together, I think, for effective learning.

Now, the question, Dr. Perry, what do you think made a reason in the sun such a powerful and endearing play? I think that it's power comes in, it comes from its truth, you know, I mean, there's just not, it's such an honest portrait of black folks and our desires and our dreams and our frustrations and resilience. And it's not, that's not dressed up, you know, it's really honest and sincerely offered. And I think, you know, we have a lot of beautiful art, but there's something about the clarity of that play that makes us stand out, you know, and the people. I mean, we know all those people now, you know, we know every character. And we are, you know, and I think that's what it is, you know. Any final comments, Dr. Perry?

Oh, I just would say thank you so much for the work that you do. I just think it's really special that we still have, you know, and I know that we don't have as many spaces as we used to, but we had that we have spaces to have real conversations about, you know, our art and our work and our politics and our history. And all of that, so I appreciate you having me on, but I also just appreciate the work you do generally. So thank you. Dr. Monty Perry, the use Roger's professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, an author of Looking for the Rain, the Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hasbury. If you have questions, comments or suggestions as to future in black American programs, email us at in black America at kut.org. Also, let us know what radio station you heard us over. Remember to like us on Facebook and to follow us on Twitter. The views and opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of this station or of the University of Texas at Austin. You can hear previous programs online at kut.org.

Until we have the opportunity again for technical producer David Alvarez, I'm John M. Hanson Jr. Thank you for joining us today. Please join us again next week. CD copies of this program are available and may be purchased by writing in black America CDs. KUT Radio, 300 West Dean Keaton Boulevard, Austin, Texas, 78712. This has been a production of KUT Radio.