Racial Discrimination in 'A Raisin in the Sun'

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A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry is a dramatic play written in 1959. The play is about an African American family that lives in the Chicago South Side in the 1950’s. Hansberry shows the struggles and difficulties that the family encounters due to discrimination. Inspired by her personal experience with discrimination, she uses the characters of the play, A Raisin In The Sun, to show how this issue affects families.
Hansberry faces housing discrimination due to her race, which affects her family. According to Susan Chenelle and Audrey Fisch from the New York Times, her father Carl Hansberry got a house for his family in the south side of Chicago in the 1930’s (Chenelle & Fisch, 2014). At that time there was a racially restrictive covenant that protected houses against being bought or occupied by African Americans. Therefore, this family was evicted by law. He sued and the case went to the Supreme Court around 1940, but he did not win because of the constitutionality of racially restrictive covenants. Luckily in 1948, the court found that this covenant is discrimi...

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