1. March 5, 2018
Using your own words and beliefs, describe what the American dream means to you.

2. Introduction to Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun

3. Social Background
Published in 1959, four years after Rosa Parks’ was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white person on a bus, sparking the Civil Rights Movement, Hansberry’s play illustrates black America’s struggle to gain equal access to opportunity and expression of cultural identity.

4. Sentiments in A Raisin… will be echoed by MLK in later speeches, marches, and rallies
Martin Luther King, Jr. Civil-Rights Leader
I have a dream… a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.’
                                                                       

5. Cont’d dreams represented in the play and later echoed by King
I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream…where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers.

6. In 1956, King leads a boycott of the bus laws.

7. In 1954, the Supreme Court found in favor of the plaintiffs in the Brown v. The Board of Education case. However, the desegregation of schools didn’t begin to take effect until Moreover, the case’s decision did not abolish segregation in other public areas, such as restaurants and restrooms.

8. Hansberry’s Background

9.
A Raisin…is the 1st play by a black woman to be produced on Broadway
ARITS won a Tony Award for best musical in 1974
The play gets its title from Langston Hughes’s poem, “Harlem”

10. Themes present in ARITS
Manly Pride

11. Themes present in ARITS
Cultural Pride

12. Themes present in ARITS
Family Pride