Historical Background

Lorraine Hansberry's award winning play, A Raisin in the Sun, accurately shows how black families were treated and discriminated against in the mid 1900s. In particular, black families were moving into originally white neighborhoods at this point in time in history. The main event of the play is centered around the Younger's recently purchased house in a white neighborhood. Hansberry uses the Younger family to depict perfectly what was going on in the 1950s. Hansberry writes about discrimination and poverty in an attempt to precisely exhibit the extent of how bad the blacks had it. Travis is a perfect example of how children were affected. Blacks moving into white neighborhood would more than likely face some sort of abuse. Physical or mental most whites did not like colored people near their homes. The author Hansberry does a great job of showing that so vividly.