Lorraine Hansberry: One + Love Celebrates Queer Women’s History Month

“I was born black and female,” said the trailblazing playwright Lorraine Hansberry. Her Raisin in the Sun was the first play by a black woman to be performed on Broadway. She won a New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award in 1959, becoming the first black playwright and the youngest American to do so.

But she was more than a door-opening playwright (whose other dramatic works include The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window and Les Blancs). Hansberry was a civil rights activist, supporter of and journalist for African liberation movements, public intellectual, anti-imperalist, anti-colonialist, and champion of women’s rights.

She also identified as a lesbian. Hansberry had women lovers, and joined Daughters of Bilitis, the first lesbian civil and political rights organization in the U.S. She also contributed letters to the organization’s publication, The Ladder, the first nationally distributed lesbian publication in the U.S.

Hansberry is credited with making groundbreaking, radical links between homophobia and sexism. She defined herself as an intersectional being, which in turn defined her politics.

Loraine Hansberry, One+Love honors your vital contribution to queer women’s history!