Speaker 1: Absolutely amazing to have you joined us here on Truth
Speaker 1: Time with doctor Cornell West and Nina Turner. As you know,
Speaker 1: we always counted all joy to be together with you
Speaker 1: in moments like this. This is our teaching Thursday and
Speaker 1: on today we are discussing the life and the legacy
Speaker 1: the imprint of the one and only Lorraine Handsbury. And
Speaker 1: I know every time Doc and I do a teacher
Speaker 1: in Thursday where we're talking about an individual, it is
Speaker 1: always the one and only, because really they are the
Speaker 1: one and only there at the top of their game,
Speaker 1: top of their class, they made they left an indelible
Speaker 1: mark on this world. And there's a cloud of witnesses
Speaker 1: for people like this, and Lorraine Handsbury is right in
Speaker 1: there now. She wrote a Raisin in the Sun, a
Speaker 1: play about a struggling black family, and this is how
Speaker 1: she came into prominence. I think she was the youngest
Speaker 1: and the first black black woman or just black person. Doc,
Speaker 1: I forget the distinction to win the prestigious New York
Speaker 1: Critics Circle Award, which was really a big deal. But
Speaker 1: Raising in the Sun is not her only work, but
Speaker 1: it is the work that she is best known for,
Speaker 1: and it's about a struggling black family which opened and
Speaker 1: that opened on Broadway, which was all the rage. Even today,
Speaker 1: Raising in the Sun is still quite a classic Sidney
Speaker 1: Poitier played, Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you have not seen
Speaker 1: The Raisin in the Sun or and or read read
Speaker 1: the book, you definitely need to do it. She's the
Speaker 1: granddaughter of freed enslaved person, the youngest by seven years
Speaker 1: of four children. Lorraine Vivie and Hansbury was born on
Speaker 1: May nineteen, That's also Minister Malcolm X's birthday. To doc,
Speaker 1: she was born on May nineteen, nineteen thirty, and she
Speaker 1: left this plane of existence on January of twelve, nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty five. She was born in Shottown and she died
Speaker 1: in New York. So I'm setting that up for you.
Speaker 1: I'm setting that layup for you. Lorraine Hansbury.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you're absolutely right. There's simply nobody like her.
Speaker 2: But it's important to keep in mind that she writes
Speaker 2: against the backdrop of a great black literary tradition. One
Speaker 2: there's no literary tradition in the modern world which has
Speaker 2: been initiated by women and every genre other than the
Speaker 2: Black literary tradition in the United States. You got Phyllis
Speaker 2: Wheatley and Pope got here At Jacobs in the novel
Speaker 2: You Got, ant Latold's first collection of essays, You Got
Speaker 2: Marie Evans, the first public speaker. And Lorraine Hansbury, of
Speaker 2: course takes the play to the highest level in the
Speaker 2: saying which same way in which Tony Morrison takes it
Speaker 2: to the highest level, the same way in which the
Speaker 2: first wave of blues artists at the highest level of
Speaker 2: mul Rainey and Bessie Smith. So that we brothers, you know,
Speaker 2: we've done some magnificent things, but we are part of
Speaker 2: a tradition that has been dominated both as pioneers and
Speaker 2: as culminating points by black women. And Lorraine Hansbury and
Speaker 2: just takes Let people take a look at here. This
Speaker 2: is who we're talking about. She'd be dead at thirty
Speaker 2: four years old and produced more than most people in
Speaker 2: a lifetime. And of course I got I didn't want
Speaker 2: to lose and miss out Gwendolyn Brooks at the poetry
Speaker 2: at the point I'm making as well, but to die
Speaker 2: at thirty four years old. She died January twelfth, nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty five, was the last funeral that Malcolm X attended.
Speaker 2: He was on the front row. Paul Robinson gave the
Speaker 2: eulogies the only time that Paul Robinson met Malcolm X,
Speaker 2: and Malcolm was very, very eager to meet Paul Roberson.
Speaker 2: But our dear sister was in the coffin at that
Speaker 2: particular church in Harlem in January nineteen sixty five. Malcolm,
Speaker 2: of course would die the next month. Both born the
Speaker 2: same day, but five years apart, uncome twenty five, she
Speaker 2: in nineteen thirty. So that when we're talking about Lorraine Hansbury,
Speaker 2: you're talking about this great, great wave in a grand,
Speaker 2: grand ocean. You mentioned her father, Carl, who was quite
Speaker 2: an activist, ended up in Mexico because of the racism
Speaker 2: in America, because of him his attempt to move into
Speaker 2: a white neighborhood and the ugly response, even gunshots cutting
Speaker 2: through the windows of his family. Nanny, his wife, who
Speaker 2: was Lorraine's mother, was also quite an activist. So Lorraine
Speaker 2: grew up in a context where she met du Boys
Speaker 2: when she was very young. She met Rose when she
Speaker 2: was very young, she met Duke was very young. She
Speaker 2: was like you and I in terms of just growing
Speaker 2: up in an ordinary black neighborhood, in the ordinary black church,
Speaker 2: in a black community. She actually had access to these
Speaker 2: giants as a very young person. She never went to college,
Speaker 2: but the college went through her Toversity of Wisconsin and
Speaker 2: then made her way up spending time in Mexico to
Speaker 2: New York to be a writer. So she has a
Speaker 2: special kind of calling. She had genius, and she had,
Speaker 2: as you noted before, commitment to writing, and especially in
Speaker 2: her twenties. She writes and Raisin in the sun, I
Speaker 2: mean that's and you're so right. She wrote many other
Speaker 2: praise LeBlanc's a critique of African colonialism. She wrote sign
Speaker 2: in Sydney Brusting's Window, which are no black characters at all,
Speaker 2: just all white and Jewish folk. She wrote, what's the
Speaker 2: use of flowers? Was the critique of waiting for the Beckett.
Speaker 2: She wrote a whole host of plays and essays to
Speaker 2: be Young, Gifted in Black, which is her collection of essays.
Speaker 2: It was just a classic, all before she thirty four
Speaker 2: years old. I keep coming back to that because she
Speaker 2: was so invested, she was so involved, She was willing
Speaker 2: to sacrifice to do what she was put here to do,
Speaker 2: put her pen to paper, and when she did. The
Speaker 2: world was shaken.
Speaker 1: Yeah, indelible. Mark. We are on our truth on truth Time,
Speaker 1: our teaching Thursday. We're talking about the life and the
Speaker 1: impact of Lorraine Hansberry, a playwright in many ways, of
Speaker 1: civil rights activists in her own right and revealing stories
Speaker 1: that really shift I just a love leader. We can say,
Speaker 1: you know that shifts consciousness and makes people uncomfortable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she did that, and she absolutely changed the world. When
Speaker 1: we come forward, we'll continue our conversation. So glad again
Speaker 1: that you are here with us on this teach in
Speaker 1: Thursday on Truth Time with doctor Cornell West and Nina Turner.
Speaker 1: If you've missed any part of not only Teaching Thursdays,
Speaker 1: but any of our daily shows, make sure you download
Speaker 1: the Kate BLA fifteen eighty app. You gotta do that,
Speaker 1: the KBLA Talk fifteen eighty app. And wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcast, you can catch us and our colleagues. The
Speaker 1: whole network is just teeming with brilliance and you can
Speaker 1: watch us, or you can catch us on YouTube too,
Speaker 1: or the two. As my grandson likes to say. We're
Speaker 1: talking about Lorraine Hansbury, a playwright, a leader through through
Speaker 1: through the through the not just the written word, but
Speaker 1: having her works come to life on stage, which is
Speaker 1: indeed a beautiful thing. En it up self. She made
Speaker 1: history winning the New York Critics Award the youngest and
Speaker 1: the only deck I got to check. I don't know
Speaker 1: if she was the first. Was she the first black
Speaker 1: person to win it?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Okay, the first black person to win the New York
Speaker 1: Critics Award, which is a very big deal her her
Speaker 1: most the work she is most famous for is A
Speaker 1: Raisin in the Sun, and she wrote it was really
Speaker 1: titled the Crystal Stare, That's what I was the original
Speaker 1: title of it. A play about a struggling black family
Speaker 1: in Chicago, which was later renamed or Raisin in the Sun,
Speaker 1: a line from one of my favorite poets, Langston Hughes.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, who you know? Cleveland? Cleveland got Legston
Speaker 1: Hughes all up in us? But that poem and the
Speaker 1: play opened at the Barrymore the fo Barrymore Theater on
Speaker 1: March eleventh, nineteen fifty nine, and was a great success,
Speaker 1: and it had a run of over five hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty performances. People were on fire about this play. It
Speaker 1: was the first play produced on Broadway by an African
Speaker 1: American woman nineteen fifty nine. That it took a long time,
Speaker 1: but she broke that barrier.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right, and she did it on her own terms.
Speaker 2: That's very, very important because it could have been a
Speaker 2: number of plays that had been used.
Speaker 1: When.
Speaker 2: Edited, imundated by folk that tried to curtail the power
Speaker 2: of the play. But Raising in the Sun was a
Speaker 2: play written by a free black loved herself, who respected
Speaker 2: herself and required the White way, which is what Broadway
Speaker 2: was required, the White way to respect Black talent. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's very important, very important.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, oh my god. Yeah, to do and especially
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty nine, to be able to do something
Speaker 1: of this magnitude on your own terms. I mean even
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty five, Black people find it incredibly difficult
Speaker 1: most of the time to do things on our own terms.
Speaker 1: That does not get us a psychologically bruised. So just
Speaker 1: in Langston Hughes's poem Harlem, I want to Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a very short poem, and you can feel the emotions
Speaker 1: of that poem. It's short and it's powerful. What happens
Speaker 1: to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a
Speaker 1: raisin in the sun, or fester like a sore and
Speaker 1: then run. Does it stink like rotten meat or crust
Speaker 1: and sugar over like a syrupiece. Maybe it just SAgs
Speaker 1: like a heavy low or does it explodes? So that
Speaker 1: is Lengthston Hughes's poem, Harlem, what happens to a dream?
Speaker 1: You know the first the first stands of what happens
Speaker 1: to a dream deferred? And that is a seminal question.
Speaker 1: That is a question for a lifetime. What happens to
Speaker 1: a dream deferred?
Speaker 2: That's exactly right in many ways, it's the history of
Speaker 2: black people in America.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, sir, constantly asking that question and constantly being
Speaker 1: put in positions where our dreams are deferred generationally. So
Speaker 1: you know, no exaggeration about that. And this nation has
Speaker 1: never been able to one come to grips with the
Speaker 1: fact that it is because of the structure of this
Speaker 1: nation that Black people find themselves generationally having to constantly
Speaker 1: ask themselves that question and answer it. We answer over
Speaker 1: and over. We know what happens to dream deferd? You're lynched,
Speaker 1: you know your chattel, you live in Jim Crow, debt, peinage, sharecropping,
Speaker 1: red lining, lack of generational wealth. Can't get in the
Speaker 1: C suites unless you're cleaning the C suites. Oh, we
Speaker 1: know utality, a political system that continues to churn on
Speaker 1: our backs and our bodies. We know what happens to
Speaker 1: a dream deferred.
Speaker 2: Powerful. That's powerful, that's eloquent. That's exactly right. And part
Speaker 2: of the two has to do with exactly what the
Speaker 2: dream is. You see, when Martin King said he had
Speaker 2: a dream, he didn't say my dream, it is it dream?
Speaker 2: He said, my dream is rooted the American dream. That's
Speaker 2: a dialectical critique of the American dream. The American dream
Speaker 2: is a materialistic dream, obsessed with status and position, whereas
Speaker 2: the dream for black freedom includes the poverty. Yes, there
Speaker 2: is a certain prosperity for everybody, but it's not an obsession.
Speaker 2: It's not a fetishizing or an idolizing of just material things.
Speaker 2: It's about self respect. It's about self esteem, it's about
Speaker 2: self regard. It's about quality of community. It's about the
Speaker 2: right kinds of relationships so that human beings power and flourish.
Speaker 2: That has a spiritual and a moral dimension to it.
Speaker 2: That talk about the American dream doesn't have at all,
Speaker 2: is he Trump living the American dream? He's a thorough
Speaker 2: going gangster. You don't have a spiritual either, now a
Speaker 2: bone of spirituality and morality in his body. But he's
Speaker 2: a success. And so that, Uh, when when when? When? When? When? When? When?
Speaker 2: Lorraine Hensbery, Lorraine Hansbury is talking about raising in the
Speaker 2: sun and the dream deferred. You know, her dream coming
Speaker 2: out of the Black freedom struggle is in no way
Speaker 2: the same or identical with the mainstream American dream. But
Speaker 2: it's still a dream. Yeah, still a dream, but it
Speaker 2: has elements in terms of yes, we want prosperity, Yes
Speaker 2: we want to be able to live life with a
Speaker 2: certain kind of decency, but at that deeper level of
Speaker 2: character and integrity, honesty and decency. That that's what Walter
Speaker 2: was all about in that play when when the mama
Speaker 2: and his mama looks at him and says, we used
Speaker 2: to talk about freedom. Now everybody only talks about money. Yeah,
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty nine, she said. We used to talk about
Speaker 2: self respect, and we used to talk about helping each other.
Speaker 2: We used to talk about a sense of community. Now
Speaker 2: it's just this isolated individualism and careerism and opportunism and noncistism.
Speaker 2: Now that's that mama, who herself again didn't go to college,
Speaker 2: but at least two colleges went through her.
Speaker 1: Yeah, ain't that the truth? Doctor, It's I mean, we
Speaker 1: use the term wrestle with and brother Tavis uses that too.
Speaker 1: I think that is a beautiful, simple description of what
Speaker 1: black people have to do on every level of society,
Speaker 1: and certainly Lorraine Hansbury captures that in her works, and
Speaker 1: particularly in The Raisin in the Sun. As we were
Speaker 1: coming forward, talked about the fact that she's the granddaughter
Speaker 1: of free enslaved persons, and I mean, most black people
Speaker 1: track their lineage right there, you know, right there, and
Speaker 1: you know her her father was, her father was a
Speaker 1: successful real estate broker. Oh yeah, And this part is
Speaker 1: important because black people are disproportionately impoverished. Sometimes we forget
Speaker 1: that there were very successful, very middle class, upper middle
Speaker 1: class of black people are running the world, so to speak.
Speaker 1: They were, and they were there, and a lot of
Speaker 1: them donated to the causes of black uplift because if
Speaker 1: they didn't do it, nobody else would. And your point
Speaker 1: about what the mother the character, the mother character said,
Speaker 1: I often say that black people have picked up other
Speaker 1: people's bad habits. And that's pretty much what encapsulates what
Speaker 1: the mother was saying. We used to talk about this.
Speaker 1: Now all we care about is that we used you know.
Speaker 1: So yeah, we have picked up other people's bad habits
Speaker 1: and it reaks havoc on our community. We can't be
Speaker 1: like everybody else. I no, I don't wish that we could,
Speaker 1: because we the most emulated people on the planet, But
Speaker 1: in terms of how they get over, society don't let
Speaker 1: us get over in the same way. So we just cannot.
Speaker 1: It's an immutable fact. I think it's always going to
Speaker 1: be that way. It's similarly people like doctor WB the
Speaker 1: Boys and Nina Simone and so many others who knew
Speaker 1: that they had to leave this place because their souls
Speaker 1: were being stripped. Doc every single second in this country,
Speaker 1: the souls of black people are being stripped. Fight. I
Speaker 1: mean we fight. We're resilient, We're definitely resilient as hell.
Speaker 1: But it is tiring. It is exhausting to have to
Speaker 1: do that all the time.
Speaker 2: Oh, that is so very true. That is so very true.
Speaker 2: And she talked about this a lot in her journals
Speaker 2: in terms of even as a middle class woman who
Speaker 2: decided to be in solidarity with the poor. She moved
Speaker 2: right here to New York and became associate editor of
Speaker 2: the Freedom Journal that was edited by Louis Burnham, but
Speaker 2: it was produced by Paul Robison, and basically became not
Speaker 2: just a socialist but a revolutionary socialist. And so she
Speaker 2: would talk about how spiritually it was so difficult to
Speaker 2: be able to sustain herself even though she gained strength
Speaker 2: from black people. She gained strength from black culture, she
Speaker 2: gained strength from black music. That we made the point
Speaker 2: before that she was a godmother of Lisa, who was
Speaker 2: the daughter of Nina Simone. Deep connection to two giants
Speaker 2: and geniuses, right dead, good call might. But she's there
Speaker 2: with the boys. She's said the boy. She's close to
Speaker 2: Paul Robson. She goes to Uruguay when Robson's passport is
Speaker 2: taking away. You can't leave the country. He asked her
Speaker 2: to do it for him, which means to court. The
Speaker 2: FBI is on her like well on right and black
Speaker 2: on coal, back on coal and wet on water.
Speaker 1: I mean, just the trauma, it's it's uh, it's immeasurable,
Speaker 1: the trauma. Just the trauma. So her you know, going
Speaker 1: back to her narratives to her father is it's a
Speaker 1: real estate broker. And her mother was a school teacher.
Speaker 1: A lot of black women, you know, that profession forced
Speaker 1: to be domestics disproportionately, definitely being a school teacher very honorable,
Speaker 1: very noble, very highly respected, as it should be even
Speaker 1: to this day. And they were viciously attacked. Doc, I
Speaker 1: think you started talking about that. I want to lay
Speaker 1: out the frame a little more, a little deeper. In
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty eight, Hansbury's family moved to a white neighborhood.
Speaker 1: Now why the neighborhood got to be a white neighborhood,
Speaker 1: But I digress. I'm gonna put that in the parking lot.
Speaker 1: We know they moved to a white neighborhood and because
Speaker 1: just because of their very presence, they didn't do anything wrong,
Speaker 1: they were attacked, stock attacked. They moved into a neighborhood
Speaker 1: that they can afford to live in, and the white
Speaker 1: folks of that neighborhood attacked them just because they're black.
Speaker 1: So they moved into this neighborhood. They wanted them out,
Speaker 1: you know, you got to go, and they refused. They
Speaker 1: stood strong, They stood in the strength of blackness, and
Speaker 1: then a court ordered them to move. See I want
Speaker 1: them to system it. The system forced him to move.
Speaker 2: Go ahead, doctor, But then it went all the way
Speaker 2: to the Supreme Court, year after year at and by
Speaker 2: the time it hit the Supreme Court, you know, the
Speaker 2: damage had already been done. That the fou left the country,
Speaker 2: said he want nothing to do with America and moved
Speaker 2: to Mexico and had dropped dead in Mexico. So she
Speaker 2: would say white supremacy helped kill my f He was
Speaker 2: so deeply Republican party operative. He was deeply invested in America.
Speaker 2: But it broke his heart. It broke his heart, and
Speaker 2: I think that radicalized her as Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you could see it in her works. And that
Speaker 1: Supreme Court case that you're referring to, Hansbury Hansbury versus Lee, Uh,
Speaker 1: it ended up, but the damage was already done to
Speaker 1: the hand very family. That's why we fight, do you
Speaker 1: and you talk? You and I We gotta fight today
Speaker 1: for ourselves. We're fighting for the past, and we're also
Speaker 1: fighting for tomorrow. Even though this ruling didn't necessarily it
Speaker 1: the the damage was already done. But in the ruling
Speaker 1: restrictive they ruled restrictive covenants or illegal because of that case.
Speaker 1: Stop because of that case. And even in the city
Speaker 1: of Cleveland, the city of Shaker, which is a suburban
Speaker 1: community of Cleveland, they had restrictive covenants. No black people,
Speaker 1: no Jewish people. They even have barriers that because the community,
Speaker 1: the Cleveland community that I live in, that I grew
Speaker 1: up in a butt Shaker, right, and they put on
Speaker 1: the side street doc these barriers so that you couldnot
Speaker 1: cross over into Shaker, the city of Shaker, from Cleveland
Speaker 1: on the resididential streets. Wow, oh yeah, oh yeah. And
Speaker 1: this is really like this was during my you know,
Speaker 1: the seventies eighties, during my childhood. Like this, this is real.
Speaker 1: So the whole and then the whole Shaker Square, which
Speaker 1: is historic, the whole notion of Shaker, restrictive covenants, all
Speaker 1: up in the deeds, all up in the des not
Speaker 1: you know, we're not talking one hundred, two hundred years ago. Wow, wow,
Speaker 1: less than sixty years ago. Is wild, I mean, just
Speaker 1: absolutely wild. So Hansbury Hansbury, the Lee ruling. The Supreme
Speaker 1: Court finally did rule that restrictive covenants were illegal. But again,
Speaker 1: look at how many dreams were deferred before we got there.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Truth Time with doctor Cornell West and
Speaker 1: Nina Turner on our Teaching Thursday, lifting up the life
Speaker 1: of Legacy the brilliance of playwright Lorraine Hansbury. You are
Speaker 1: listening to Truth Time with doctor Cornell West and Nina
Speaker 1: Turner on Our Teacher on Thursday. We're talking about the
Speaker 1: brilliance of Lorraine Hansbury, the playwright, a woman who accomplished
Speaker 1: so much in a very very short time on this earth.
Speaker 1: Her very existence was revolutionary, as it is for most
Speaker 1: black people, and she got an opportunity to leave an
Speaker 1: indelible mark on the world through her works. She was
Speaker 1: born on May nineteenth, nineteen thirty, in Chicago, Illinois, and
Speaker 1: she passed away on January the twelfth, nineteen sixty five,
Speaker 1: in New York. So, Doc, her family, you know, highly
Speaker 1: middle class still, you know, going back to that point
Speaker 1: about her father, her mother being a teacher, her father
Speaker 1: being a real estate broker and highly successful. It really
Speaker 1: just shows that money does not shield black people from
Speaker 1: the pain of being black.
Speaker 2: That's true. That's true, and that having money does not
Speaker 2: impede one from being in solidarity with folk who have
Speaker 2: no money pro choices. She made political choices. She made
Speaker 2: idiot choices. That was a kind of what Huey Newton
Speaker 2: would call a class suicide. It's like Martin King. He
Speaker 2: could have remained middle class, but he decided to be
Speaker 2: in solidity with folk who were broke as the Ten
Speaker 2: Commandments financially. And that is a life very much of
Speaker 2: Lorraine Hansbury, that she chooses to be a revolutionary. Yeah,
Speaker 2: she really does. You see it now, just work. You
Speaker 2: see it in her activism. When she was asked to
Speaker 2: go to the White House representing Snicks, she ended up
Speaker 2: telling off to Kennedy's and telling them that they had
Speaker 2: no sense of what was going on in the world.
Speaker 2: That she was going to stand for the students who
Speaker 2: that they were trashing there in the White House. Is
Speaker 2: very famous exchange that she had with the with the
Speaker 2: White House advisor. She was standing in the name of
Speaker 2: Stokely Carmichael and Diane Nash. Very close of course to
Speaker 2: James Baldwin, his famous essay Sweet Lorraine. I would highly
Speaker 2: recommend that the people you want to read with the
Speaker 2: best of James Baldwin. It's his tribute to Lorraine Hansbury
Speaker 2: called sweet Lorraine. And Baldwin himself was also there and
Speaker 2: was very uh, I mean, he was just proud to
Speaker 2: be in the room with Lorraine. But she had to
Speaker 2: tell off the Kennedy's and actually ended the meeting while
Speaker 2: out on them in the White House. That's a rare
Speaker 2: thing to have black folks just to walk out on
Speaker 2: president and vice presidents and attorney generals. Most black folks
Speaker 2: so happy to be in the White House. They cow
Speaker 2: towing and help when they get in there.
Speaker 1: You know, Ain't that the truth?
Speaker 2: That?
Speaker 1: Yeah, what a powerful statement for her to dramatically. I
Speaker 1: love a flair for drop for the dramatic to get
Speaker 1: up and walk out on these folks knowing they don't
Speaker 1: mean they don't mean business, they don't stand on business
Speaker 1: as we say today. Wow. Just God bless her for that.
Speaker 1: And you know, her parents they were very generous, as
Speaker 1: a lot of upper middle class Black people were, because
Speaker 1: we knew that we really were all that we had,
Speaker 1: and so they made donations, certainly to two of our
Speaker 1: legacy organizations, one being the NAACP, any other being the
Speaker 1: Urban League.
Speaker 2: Know that with her father, of course, was official in
Speaker 2: both of those organizations before he left for Mexico. M
Speaker 2: m hmm, Well he left for Mexican. Lorraine herself was
Speaker 2: probably a little bit too revolutionary for both of those organs.
Speaker 1: I think just a little bit.
Speaker 2: John Henry Clark and Paul Robinson and the others, and
Speaker 2: de Bois and others, that that was much more consistent
Speaker 2: with her revolutionary spirit than the Urban League of NAACP.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I thank God for that revolutionary spirit. Now,
Speaker 1: her family is I understand how the tradition of going
Speaker 1: to southern uh, southern Black colleges, and she decided not
Speaker 1: to do that. She broke with that tradition, and she
Speaker 1: attended the University of Wisconsin and Madison, and while at school,
Speaker 1: she changed her major from painting to writing, and after
Speaker 1: two years she decided to drop out. And then that's
Speaker 1: when she moved to New York. You talk about what
Speaker 1: I take from that is really being attuned to hearing
Speaker 1: what you're calling could be, instead of getting stuck in
Speaker 1: what you're doing, which could be. But she was very
Speaker 1: open to what her spirit was telling her she should do,
Speaker 1: and thank god.
Speaker 2: She did absolutely, And that takes courage.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it does. And she attended the New School
Speaker 1: and we both are love and fans of the New School.
Speaker 1: You know, one of my colleagues was telling me that
Speaker 1: one of the reasons the New School was created was
Speaker 1: so that academics could go have a place to go
Speaker 1: and be free in their academia. And just thinking about that,
Speaker 1: the irony of that, the founders of the New School
Speaker 1: saying that we have to have academics, people in the
Speaker 1: academy who are free to teach, who are free socially politically.
Speaker 1: And now you fast forward to what's happening now where
Speaker 1: you have President Donald J. Trump and his entire administration
Speaker 1: attacking higher education, the critical thinking, the freeness of what
Speaker 1: universities and colleges are supposed to be about.
Speaker 2: That's true. I mean, the New School was founded mainly
Speaker 2: from Columbia University who were fired from Columbia because of
Speaker 2: their dissonant voices. They were fired because they're critical of
Speaker 2: the war. They were excluded. That tenure was called in
Speaker 2: the question. And then you had the Jewish refugee intellectuals
Speaker 2: who are escaping jew hating Europe led by the Nazis,
Speaker 2: And so the New School became a site for not
Speaker 2: just free speech and freedom of expression, but the most
Speaker 2: radical dissenting voices in the academy on the East Coast
Speaker 2: that were joined by the Jewish refugee intellectuals who were
Speaker 2: escaping Nazism and fashion them. The New School has a very,
Speaker 2: very rich tradition, it really does. It's a very rare institution.
Speaker 2: They're blessed to have you as a singing fellow, is.
Speaker 1: I am a senior fellow, and I feel blessed to
Speaker 1: have them and to understand that rich tradition. I'm thinking, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is the place for me and Doc. I know you,
Speaker 1: you've been you you were a you were a fellow, right?
Speaker 1: What did they call it? Was something? It wasn't like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I gave a series of lectures there a couple
Speaker 2: of years ago that was kind of like a fellow
Speaker 2: in a way.
Speaker 1: They had another title for it. I remember reading about
Speaker 1: it and being so excited that you were at the
Speaker 1: New School too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, sister, Well Judas Butler also had a similar designation.
Speaker 2: But historically, I mean, the New School has always been
Speaker 2: in a place where there was an openness to radical
Speaker 2: dissenting voices, more so than almost any other place in
Speaker 2: the country.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I hope they do not buckle under this bigotry.
Speaker 1: They got to understand their origins, why they exist, and
Speaker 1: say true to their mission to their caller for what
Speaker 1: a beautiful thing. So when she was there, she attended
Speaker 1: the New School for Social Research, and then she worked
Speaker 1: for and you mentioned this earlier, the great Paul Robinson's
Speaker 1: progressive black newspaper Freedom as a writer and associate editor.
Speaker 1: And she did that for about three years from nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty nineteen fifty three. She also worked part time as
Speaker 1: a waitress and a cashier and wrote in her spare time.
Speaker 1: So although her parents were upper middle class, she was
Speaker 1: forging her own way, her own way economically, that is
Speaker 1: what she was doing. By nineteen fifty six, Hansbury quit
Speaker 1: her jobs and admitted her time to writing. In nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty seven she joined the Daughters of built not Shire
Speaker 1: from Pronouncing that Right and contributed letters to their magazine,
Speaker 1: The Latter about feminism and homophobia, so ahead of her
Speaker 1: time on that as well. Her lesbian identity was exposed
Speaker 1: in the articles, but she wrote under her initials LH
Speaker 1: for fear of discrimination. And it is the same fear
Speaker 1: discrimination that our sisters and brothers and family and friends
Speaker 1: in that community. The LGBTQ plus community are often under
Speaker 1: even to this day, so just revolutionary in every way.
Speaker 1: You're listening to True Time with doctor Cornell Weston Nina
Speaker 1: Turner on our Teaching Thursday lifting up the life and
Speaker 1: the legacy of Lorraine Hansbury, playwright and Trailblazer. When we return,
Speaker 1: we'll contay, yes, this is the our teaching Thursday day.
Speaker 1: We're lifting up the life of Lorraine Hansbury, playwright, trail blazer,
Speaker 1: shaking things up. She was born on May nineteenth, nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty in Chataw that is, Chicago, Illinois, and she passed
Speaker 1: away on January to twelfth, nineteen sixty five, in New York,
Speaker 1: New York. But what she did between that dash in
Speaker 1: her very short lifetime, most people would not do in
Speaker 1: like one hundred lifetimes. We are so blessed that God
Speaker 1: saw fit to put her on this earth, even if
Speaker 1: it was for a short time. And the fact that
Speaker 1: she found her purpose and her calling and she used
Speaker 1: it in a way to uplift that. What are some
Speaker 1: of the other points about her and also the legacy
Speaker 1: of her work that we should bring forward today.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that one of the things that's crucial
Speaker 2: about Lorraine Hansbury was that she was the thing today
Speaker 2: into black culture and the Western tradition at the same time,
Speaker 2: meaning that she in her plays, for example, you could
Speaker 2: see her wrestling with from sofolkles to Samuel Beckett on
Speaker 2: the one hand and spirituals, blues and jazz on the other.
Speaker 2: You might remember the Moments and Raising in the Sun.
Speaker 2: Will Walter grabs Leana and they start dancing too the
Speaker 2: jazz records, and then you go into the kitchen and
Speaker 2: Mama's singing, I don't feel no ways tired. He's down
Speaker 2: and goes to the jazz club and says, the only
Speaker 2: person that understands me in the whole world is that
Speaker 2: brother blowing that saxophone in the minor key, living a
Speaker 2: life of dissonance. That black people have made dissonance a
Speaker 2: way of life. So she's grounded in the lived experience
Speaker 2: of black people, but she's also pulling from the Shakespeares
Speaker 2: and from the Irish writers, and from the Russian writers
Speaker 2: and so forth. She has an internationalism and a cosmopolitanism
Speaker 2: that is really quite powerful, and I think that continues
Speaker 2: to speak to a lot of the young writers today.
Speaker 2: Tony Marshall is the same way, of course.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that indelible market in some ways. You know, thinking
Speaker 1: about Nina Simone who classically trained pianists, you know they
Speaker 1: drawn from all of these different talents and but very
Speaker 1: African at the same time, like they're not running from
Speaker 1: the beauty of blackness, that's right. Bringing in all this
Speaker 1: other stuff. It's like it's like making some gumbo.
Speaker 2: It as it.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. So definitely a playwright. You know that
Speaker 1: New York Critics Circle award the first to do it,
Speaker 1: just making history. As anybody who was watched Star Trek
Speaker 1: would understand this at warp warp speed because the die
Speaker 1: so young and the dude accomplished so much. She was
Speaker 1: moving at warp warp speed. In nineteen sixty three, Hansbury
Speaker 1: became active in the civil rights movement. Again. You could
Speaker 1: see that in her works. And I don't think that
Speaker 1: she had a choice because her parents. It was in
Speaker 1: her you know, she couldn't deny that if she wanted to,
Speaker 1: and she was with she had the opportunity to be
Speaker 1: around you know, some very influential people at that time,
Speaker 1: the Harry Belafontes, at Lena Horns, the James Ballwins, you know,
Speaker 1: all of that kind of stuff. She had an opportunity
Speaker 1: to meet with then Attorney General Robert Kennedy to test
Speaker 1: his position on civil rights. Hello, somebody to test his position,
Speaker 1: not just to be around him, thinking it was a
Speaker 1: privilege to be around him. No, he was privileged to
Speaker 1: be around her to test his position on civil rights. God,
Speaker 1: Lorraine Hansbury. This Truth Time with doctor Cordonell West and
Speaker 1: Nina Turner. When we come forward, we will continue in
Speaker 1: our remaining moments, this riveting, riveting dialogue about Lorraine Hansbury.
Speaker 1: You are listening the Truth Time with doctor Corne West
Speaker 1: and Nina Turner. We are talking about the life, the legacy,
Speaker 1: the indelible mark that the one and only Lorraine Hansbury
Speaker 1: made on this world in such a short period of time.
Speaker 1: Doct this is our last you know, four minutes here
Speaker 1: as we were coming forward, or before we came forward,
Speaker 1: we were talking about her souljoerm within the civil rights movement,
Speaker 1: being surrounded by so many giants. I mean, she was
Speaker 1: a giant also in her own right, Harry Belafonte, Lena Horne,
Speaker 1: James Baldwin, and the fact that when she met Robert Kennedy,
Speaker 1: she was there, not the hobnob, not to take pictures.
Speaker 1: The post on social media did not exist at that time,
Speaker 1: but she was there to test his position ship on
Speaker 1: civil rights. Hello, somebody.
Speaker 2: She went in to question and interrogate, not simply to
Speaker 2: ingratiate power. Come on against power. It's no accident that
Speaker 2: she would spend the latter years of her life actually
Speaker 2: writing about the Haitian Revolution of player. Never finished writing
Speaker 2: about the character that the boy said it was his
Speaker 2: favorite character of all time, du Saint lou Tousin. Yes,
Speaker 2: somebody who had that spirit of Tucson, the spirit of
Speaker 2: Fanny Lou Haimer, the spirit of Nat Turner, the spirit
Speaker 2: of Harriet Tupman, the spirit of Gabrier Brosa. She was
Speaker 2: a rebel, there's nohing about it.
Speaker 1: With a calls going a little more deeply into her
Speaker 1: life and many thanks to biography dot com. She met
Speaker 1: Robert Nima or hawf Yeah, Jewish songwriter on the picket line, and.
Speaker 2: She's like Wonderland Brooks in terms of part of the
Speaker 2: great Black literary tradition, that great tradition.
Speaker 1: Doc, we and we appreciate and love her so much.
Speaker 1: This is Truth Time with doctor Cornel West and Nina
Speaker 1: Turner Live on Purpose,