A Black Family's Struggles of Leaving the Ghetto

ENGLISH 1302:152

INSTRUCTOR: MR McCARTHY

A RAISIN IN THE SUN

A BLACK FAMILY'S STRUGGLES OF LEAVING THE GHETTO

By: MDF

Lorraine Hansberry's story " A raisin in the sun" brings many issues that plagued Black people living in Chicago in the Ghetto, and for the most part all other major cities across the United States in the late 1950's and the 1960's. She [Hansberry] brought forth the issues before they had fully come into the hearts and minds of most American people. Their fears, and apprehensions caused many blacks from accomplishing the 1950's American Dream of home ownership. Their many struggles they had to face is superbly portrayed in the story of "a raisin in the sun", for example the struggles of injustice, the complications of a man's moral responsibility, social injustices, and the lack of opportunity that plagued the African American society back during this time, and one must not forget the generational differences within their own communities.

The Primary issue at hand in "A raisin in the sun" is the pursuit for home ownership. A chance for a brighter future, with the purpose to make a better life for the children and grandchildren, and many times the generation before have suffered through hardships and sacrificed so much and all too often it seems as though it is unappreciated.

The play is about a black family who is poverty stricken and living in the Southside of Chicago. Lena Younger, known as Mama, is the family eldest. Her husband (a laborer who worked all his life for his family) recently died and she is expecting $10,000.00 life insurance check, which would greatly help this family with a lot of things for their futures. She has two adult children, Walter and Benetha who have high ambitions; Walter wants to become a businessman and own a liquor store and Benetha is in college with dreams of becoming a doctor. Both Walter and Benetha are counting on the insurance money to help them to achieve these goals.

Lena and Big Walter, her dead husband, always dreamed of owning their own home. Lena tells Ruth, Walter Lee's wife, that when she and Big Walter moved in that south-side apartment it was only supposed to be temporarily before they bought their own house, but there they are over 30 years later and still in that same apartment. The Younger family consisted of Mama, Benetha, Walter, Ruth and Travis (Walter and Ruth's son) all living under the same crowded roof, where the family shares the bathroom down the hall with other families in the projects that are slum like apartment complexes. However Lena and the family took the best care they could take of that apartment, cause they had family cleaning day. Despite what we hear about the project areas some tenants try to take good care of the area in which they live. One could imagine the slum like dwelling that they had to live in though. Run down bathrooms, filth in the alleys, horrible orders in the streets because living in rat infested, dump like areas where tenants have to share the same bathrooms, probably not having landlords come and fix things in a timely manner.

The Younger family members make continual references to the inequalities and lack of good opportunities available to Blacks. As Walter explains, " I'm thirty five-years old; I been married for eleven years and I've got a boy who sleeps in the living room-and all I got to give him is stories about rich white people" (34)

In the 1950s, for most blacks, it was like living inside a country but not really being a part of this country. While living in their own communities, blacks lived like anyone else did. They had jobs as a way of earning a living to take care of their families, they also had spouses and children, they did things that provided amusement, and they dreamed of a better future for their children, etc.

For a small percentage of blacks, there were institutes of higher learning known as colleges and universities that they could go to for a superior education and having that would allow their chances for a brighter future for them and their children. Those who were allotted an opportunity to go to such colleges or universities would be role models for other blacks who after graduating would become doctors, lawyers and other white-collar professionals.

Most public schools operated under the 1896 Supreme Court case Plessy vs. Fergus a "separate but equal" system that really wasn't equal at all. The white students had the newer and nicer books, schools, and other learning materials that were usually donated to them, while the black students had to endeavor and go through with a lot less resources, cramped debilitated constructed dwellings that were often cold, nasty and many things that were substandard, not to mention that the teachers were poor and second-rate or less qualified to teach. (Wilson) The white businesses wanted their money and the blacks paid the same prices as did the whites for merchandise and labor; blacks had to stay in the unacceptable and unsatisfactory seating section of stores and motion picture theaters; and in the South they could only ride in the back of the buses and was mandated to give up seating to white people on the bus if there was not enough seats for them to sit. (Wilson) However, if he or she were to complain, they would be immediately being known as "radical instigator". In many places, not only in the South, any black person that was identified as stepping "out of line" would speculate that he/she would have every reason to feel alarmed that their life and property would be in danger.

Chief Justice Earl Warren did away with the segregation of schools in the supreme court case Brown vs. Board of education in May of 1954. The desegregation of schools has assisted people of all races grow up together in a less perverse and antagonistic atmosphere where people can have meaningful friendships with people of other races. (Newton)

William Levitt, comes from a Jewish family which was originally from Russia and Austria. As President of Levitt and Sons, the real estate development company founded by his father Abraham Levitt near the start of the Great Depression, William Levitt oversaw all aspects of the company except for the designs of the homes they built. Design duties were handled by William's