Every day brings a new story. And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books.
Today is the story of May 19th
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It is the 139th day of the year, leaving 226 days remaining in 2022.
On this date in 1930, the African-American playwright, Lorraine Hansberry, was born.
With that 1959 play, Hansberry also became to first Black woman and the youngest woman to win the Best Play award from the New York Drama Critics' Circle.
The play also debuted shortly afterward in London's West End, and was adapted into a movie in 1961.
The play, which concerns struggles of an urban Black family, remains in the American canon and is considered a major work about Black life in 1950s America.
Hansberry was the granddaughter of an enslaved person, and grew up in Chicago. When her family moved to a white neighborhood, they were violently attacked, and a court ordered them to move, resulting in a U.S. Supreme Court case that upheld the legality of segregated neighborhoods.
She eventually moved to New York and worked for Freedom, a black newspaper run by Paul Robeson. She also wrote for the magazine The Ladder, which covered feminism and lesbian issues.
Hansberry's other major play was The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window, which was set in Greenwich Village, Hansberry's neighborhood in New York City. The play concerned what it meant to make a personal commitment to an ideal.
Her career was cut short when she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, which she died from in 1965.
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