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Marriage

On June 20, 1953, Hansberry married Robert Nemiroff, a Jewish publisher, songwriter and political activist. Hansberry and Nemiroff moved to Greenwich Village, the setting of her second Broadway play, The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window. On the night before their wedding in 1953, Nemiroff and Hansberry protested against the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in New York City. The success of the hit pop song "Cindy, Oh Cindy", co-authored by Nemiroff, enabled Hansberry to start writing full-time. Although the couple separated in 1957 and divorced in 1962, their professional relationship lasted until Hansberry's death.

In 1964, Hansberry and Nemiroff divorced but continued to work together. Upon his ex-wife's death, Robert Nemiroff donated all of Hansberry's personal and professional effects to the New York Public Library. In doing so, he blocked access to all materials related to Hansberry's lesbianism, meaning that no scholars or biographers had access for more than 50 years. In 2013, Nemiroff's daughter released the restricted materials to Kevin J. Mumford, who explored Hansberry's self-identification in subsequent work. As a result of the suppression of Hansberry's archive, Cheryl Higashida wrote, “the intersections of Hansberry’s anticolonial nationalism, feminism, and queer politics have generally been missed, ignored, or undertheorized.”

Personal Life
Hansberry was a closeted lesbian. Before her marriage, she had written in her personal notebooks about her attraction to women.

Letters to The Ladder
In May and August 1957, around the time she separated from Nemiroff, Hansberry contacted the Daughters of Bilitis, the San Francisco-based lesbian rights organization, contributing two letters to their magazine, The Ladder, both of which were published under her initials, first "L.H.N." and then "L.N." In 2014, the letters were featured in an exhibit of Hansberry's personal documents and stories at the Brooklyn Museum.

Pointing to these letters as evidence, some gay and lesbian writers credited Hansberry as having been involved in the homophile movement or as having been an activist for gay rights. According to Kevin J. Mumford, however, beyond reading homophile magazines and corresponding with their creators, "no evidence has surfaced" to support claims that Hansberry was directly involved in the movement for gay and lesbian civil equality.

Mumford stated that Hansberry's lesbianism caused her to feel isolated while A Raisin in the Sun catapulted her to fame; still, while "her impulse to cover evidence of her lesbian desires sprang from other anxieties of respectability and conventions of marriage, Hansberry was well on her way to coming out." Near the end of her life, she declared herself "committed [to] this homosexuality thing" and vowing to "create my life—not just accept it". Before her death, she built a circle of gay and lesbian friends, took several lovers, vacationed in Provincetown (where she enjoyed, in her words, "a gathering of the clan"), and subscribed to several homophile magazines.

Additionally, Hansberry wrote lesbian short stories under the pen name Emily Jones. She published four short stories, The Budget, The Anticipation of Eve (1957), Renascence, and Chanson du Konallis (1958).

The Daughters of Bilitis acknowledged Hansberry's contributions to The Ladder as well as her involvement in the New York chapter starting in 1958.

In 1958, Hansberry became involved in lesbian social circles in Greenwich Village, where she met many of her friends and romantic partners. However, Hansberry was the only Black woman in her group of lesbian friends.

Between 1958 and 1961, Hansberry worked on a play featuring all lesbian characters, called Andromeda the Thief.

In April, 2021, Lorraine Hansberry's Greenwich Village third-floor apartment at 337 Bleecker Street was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Apartment 2C, where Hansberry lived from 1953 to 1960, was nominated by the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project for its artistic and historical significance, particularly because Hansberry wrote and first read A Raisin in the Sun in this apartment.

Hansberry continually articulated an intersectional analysis of feminist, Black, and lesbian struggles. In 1961, Hansberry wrote, although never published, “On Homophobia, the ‘Intellectual Impoverishment of Women’ and a Homosexual ‘Bill of Rights,'” an essay in response to conflict at a Homophile organization conference. In the open letter, Hansberry articulates an intersectional analysis of the feminist and lesbian struggle.

"Closeted" is a complicated word, and one that I believe restricts, rather than properly illuminates the nuances of Hansberry's life. While she never publicly identified as a lesbian, it is clear that she had many sexual and romantic relationships with women, was integral in lesbian social circles in Greenwich Village in the 1950s and 1960s, and was highly interested in lesbian publications. These clear facts in her archive demonstrate that while she feared the repercussions of publicly identifying as a lesbian and perhaps still experienced internalized homophobia.

As Hugh Ryan argues, the phrase "coming out" itself has lost it's original meaning. Ryan writes, "The phrase coming out is derived from debutante culture, and it once referred exclusively to being brought out into gay society (as opposed to our modern usage, which is more about proclaiming your sexual identity to the straight world)" (109).

Links to Read


 * NYC Historic Sites
 * Lorraine Hansberry’s Secret Lesbian Herstory Touched Upon In New Documentary
 * FBI Surveillance
 * NYPL Finding Aid
 * ‘Looking for Lorraine: The Radical and Radiant Life of Lorraine Hansberry’ by Imani Perry
 * Twice Militant: Lorraine Hansberry
 * The Double Life of Lorraine Hansberry (Out Magazine, September 1999)
 * The Women of Color Behind the Daughters of Bilitis
 * AMERICAN MASTERS
 * Lorraine Hansberry papers
 * Lorraine Hansberry’s Letters Reveal the Playwright’s Private Struggle