Hansberry v. Lee

FOR THE LOVE OF CULTURE; Diaspora Identity from Africa to America

A Raisin in the Sun is powerful for its depiction of a Black family, but what makes this a truly brilliant play is Lorraine Hansberry’s ability to capture the historical context of this Black family in Chicago during the 1950s. While Hansberry explores many subjects in A Raisin in the Sun, one prominent theme is Pan-Africanism. Hansberry uses Beneatha’s choice between two men to stage a larger ideological choice between assimilation and Pan-Africanism.

Pan-Africanism is a worldwide intellectual, cultural, and political movement that aims to unite descendants of the African diaspora: communities of people who are of African descent, primarily, but not limited to, those who were dispersed as a result of the Transatlantic slave trade and colonization. When the play was written, Pan-Africanism was still a radical movement that often clashed with the then-dominant idea of assimilation. Beneatha refers to an assimilationist as “someone who is willing to give up his own culture and submerge himself completely in the dominant, and in this case oppressive culture.” Assimilation was seen as a safer way to integrate into society and often presented as a “guaranteed” means of social mobility. In the play, Beneatha has two suitors: George Murchison, an upper-class Black American, and Joseph Asagai, an international intellectual from Nigeria. Beneatha’s romantic relationship with both men shows the intricate relationship Black people globally experienced with identity.

Pan-Africanism was not a new concept for Hansberry as she was writing Raisin. In 1951, before she set out to write this groundbreaking play, Hansberry worked as a writer for the Pan-Africanist newspaper Freedom. There she exchanged ideas with other Black intellectuals including Paul Robeson, an entertainer, athlete, and activist, and W. E. B. Du Bois, the Black civil rights activist and author. As a writer at Freedom, she closely followed the Mau Mau uprisings in Kenya—a grassroots anti-colonialst effort led by Jomo Kenyatta that later helped the country gain independence in 1963. It is believed that Lorraine Hansberry wrote the character Beneatha in the image of her own beliefs and struggle with identity as an artist-activist who had championed PanAfricanism and women’s rights.

After the first World War, W. E. B. Du Bois had led the first-ever Pan-African Conference in 1919. Other prominent participants joined him in Paris to strategize demands for freedom for Africa’s colonies and a greater voice for the African diaspora. Several world leaders, including Kenyatta (Kenya), Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana), and Marcus Garvey (Jamaica), were inspired by this movement and began forming coalitions soon after with meetings in Manchester, London, and New York. Hansberry’s time with Du Bois at Freedom influenced her writing greatly. She even refers to Jomo Kenyatta in A Raisin in the Sun when Walter Lee and Beneatha dance together in the living room. Hansberry plants these historical figures in the play to show Black Americans’ awareness of the Pan-African movement.

Other political leaders embraced Pan-Africanism both in America and abroad. Kwame Nkrumah was teaching at Lincoln University, a historically Black university in Pennsylvania, when he was first introduced to the concept. He led a Pan-African movement that later propelled his home country, Ghana, to independence in 1957. Nkrumah would often visit Harlem and Philadelphia during his time in this country and was inspired by the sense of community pride there. In 1958, Nkrumah hosted the first All-African Peoples’ Conference (AAPC) in Accra, Ghana. The conference invited delegates of political movements from other independent countries such as Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Liberia, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, and Sudan. These transcontinental convenings facilitated an exchange of ideas that called for unity of African descendants worldwide. In A Raisin in the Sun, when Joseph invites Beneatha to “come home with [him]—…to Africa,” he presents her with an opportunity not only to embrace her identity as an African descendant, but to live it by leaving the country where she was born.

Meanwhile in the United States, Marcus Garvey called for a one-party state for African descendants, a doctrine now known as “Garveyism.” His organization, the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), envisioned an exodus of Black Americans to Africa in hopes of encouraging global black commerce. While Garvey’s vision did not result in an exodus, other movements, notably the Civil Rights Movement, would continue to call for unified rights for the African Diaspora through coalition building. In the 1950s, Malcolm X would rise as a prominent leader for Pan-Africanism and the Civil Rights Movement through the Nation of Islam. The Black Panther Party of the 1970s was a Black Nationalist organization that continued to call for basic human rights for Black Americans. Through free breakfast programs and health clinics, the Black Panther Party established grass roots initiatives as a blueprint for their Ten Point Program of beliefs and demands.

In the heat of Pan-Africanism, Joseph Asagai’s desire to return home to Nigeria after attending school in the United States recalls Kwame Nkrumah’s trajectory. Asagai looks to return home to bring about change in his own nation.