To Be Young, Gifted and Black: Lorraine Hansberry in her Own Words is a 1969 collection of autobiographical writings by the playwright and author best known for A Raisin in the Sun. The latter was the first play written by an African-American woman to be staged on Broadway.

Lorraine Hansberry‘s ex-husband and dear friend, the songwriter and poet Robert Nemiroff, became her literary executor after her death in 1965.

He gathered her unpublished writings and first adapted them into a stage play, To Be Young, Gifted and Black, which ran off Broadway from 1968 to 1969. The play was one of the most critically acclaimed and successful of that season and continues to be performed around the world. Read More→