Hansberry's play, whose title comes from Langston Hughes's poem "Harlem," follows the Younger family in a cramped apartment on Chicago's South Side as they await a $10,000 life-insurance payment after the father's death. Matriarch Lena (Mama) wants a house; her son Walter Lee, a chauffeur, wants to invest in a liquor store; her daughter Beneatha wants medical school and is exploring her African heritage through Nigerian student Joseph Asagai. When Mama buys a house in the all-white Clybourne Park neighborhood, a residents' representative offers to buy the family out, and Walter, having lost the remaining money to a swindling partner, must decide whether to accept. Premiered on Broadway on March 11, 1959, it was the first play by a Black woman produced on Broadway, won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for best play, and permanently widened what American theatre could stage.
Author: Lorraine Hansberry · Original publisher: Random House (New York), 1959
