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Lorraine Vivian Hansberry (May 19, 1930 – January 12, 1965) was an American playwright and civil rights activist. She was the first Black American female author to have a play performed on Broadway. Hansberry's best-known work, the play A Raisin in the Sun, highlights the lives of Black Americans in Chicago living under racial segregation. The title of the play was taken from the poem "Harlem" by Langston Hughes. At the age of 29, Hansberry won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, making her the first Black American dramatist, the fifth woman, and the youngest playwright to do so.