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WBAI To Air Special on Life and Work of Lorraine Hansberry
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WBAI To Air Special on Life and Work of Lorraine Hansberry
Lorraine Hansberry
On Tuesday, February 23, 2016, at 7pm, Out-FM, the LGBT program on noncommercial Pacifica radio station WBAI, 99.5 FM, will present “The Life and Work of Lorraine Hansberry." The two-hour special will include excerpts from "Lorraine Hansberry in Her Own Words," a 1967 radio drama aired on WBAI and Los Angeles Pacifica station KPFK. The drama was the prototype for the play, "Young, Gifted and Black," and helped it gain the attention it needed to get booked on Broadway. In addition, biographer Margaret Wilkerson, Professor Emerita of African American Studies at the University of California/Berkeley, will discuss Hanberry's significance to the debates surrounding the Civil Rights Movement, and an often overlooked part of her life: her lesbianism, her affiliation with the Daughters of Bilitis, an early lesbian rights organization, and her letters to the organization’s magazine. Wilkerson has discovered previously unpublished writings of Hansberry that deal with lesbian topics.
The 1967 drama was a personal and literary biography with performances of parts of Hansberry’s plays, letters, and other writings. “This amazing program wove her politics and her art together in an uplifting way,” said Nancy Kirton, one of the original Out-FM producers (who died in 2014). Sixty-one Broadway and Hollywood stars -- many of them internationally renowned -- took part in the production, which was narrated by actor Ossie Davis and actor-director Harold Scott. Actors range from Ruby Dee to Sidney Poitier, from Betty Davis to Paul Newman. Part of the work was rediscovered last year in the Pacifica Radio Archive and saved for posterity in pristine condition by digitization. The Los Angeles-based Archive contains thousands of hours of broadcasts from the 59-year-old non-profit social justice radio network, including the voices of James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Malcolm X, and many others. “We’re lucky the Archive was able to save this recording, Kirton said. “The Archive has been diligently working to save these recordings from oblivion by digitizing them, since many will deteriorate if not digitized soon.” The recordings have since been digitally restored as a result of a gift from Lilly Tomlin and Jane Wagner.
Hansberry was a renowned African American playwright best known for her hit Broadway play and later Hollywood movie, “A Raisin in the Sun.” In 1959, at age 28, she was the youngest playwright and first Black person to win the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Play of the Year, which propelled her into the media spotlight. Her work reflected the struggles for civil rights and Black liberation in the U.S. at the time.
Hansberry was also known for her later plays “Les Blancs,” “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window,” “The Drinking Gourd,” “The Movement,” and “What Use are Flowers?” According to Out-FM producer John Riley, “Lorraine Hansberry was able to project her strong leftist and feminist views through her work in a non-preachy way, using deep characterization and fascinating plots.”
Hansberry died in 1965 at the age of 35 of cancer. She was born on May 19, 1930, and would have been 85 on the day of the upcoming broadcast.
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New Directions in LGBT Organizing in Puerto Rico; & Moses Harper on Trauma Survivors
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Moving Beyond Single-Issue Politics
Tune to Out-FM Tuesday 11/3/2015 at 7pm for a special segment broadcast from Chicago, Illinois by John Riley and Bob Lederer. In an interview with Human Rights lawyer Osvaldo Burgos Perez, he describes recent developments in the LGBT rights movement in Puerto Rico. Perez helps lead CABE, a coalition of human rights organizations, that work on LGBT issues and other human rights issues such as the continued incarceration of political prisoner Oscar Lopez Rivera. Jan Susler, attorney for Oscar Lopez Rivera joins the discussion and explaims how popular support for his release is widespread in Puerto Rico and increasing in the United States. Rivera was fighting for independence for the Colony of Puerto Rico and has been incarcerated for 35 years for seditious conspiracy.
Jan Susler, longtime lawyer with the People's Law Office in Chicago, is the attorney for Oscar Lopez Rivera and discusses the expanding campaign to demand his release from federal prison.* Out-FM can be heard at 99.5FM in NY City or streaming at http://wbai.org
Surviving Trauma
Out-FM producer Naomi Brussel interviews Black lesbian Moses Harper talking about life experiences and her work with youth and adults who have been tramatized. Harper is also a Michael Jackson tribute artist.
*Special thanks to Ricardo Jimenez, Roberto Sanabria and a transgendered friend for assistance.