Hansberry was born May 19, 1930, in Chicago, Illinois to upper middle-class African-American parents who had a family history of dedication to political and social reform. She studied painting at the Art Institute of Chicago and attended the University of Wisconsin, Roosevelt College, and the University of Guadalajara in Mexico.

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Deciding that her future did not lie in the visual arts, in 1950 she went to New York City where she studied at the New School and in 1951 joined the staff of Freedom, a radical African-American journal. There she wrote articles and became associate editor in 1952. During this time, she met Robert Nemiroff, whom she married in 1953.

Her attendance at the International Peace Congress in Uruguay and her association there with women from other countries heightened her awareness of many issues, among them feminism. By 1957, she was coming out, privately though not publicly, as a lesbian. She and Nemiroff quietly separated in 1957 and were divorced in 1964, but maintained a close personal and professional relationship until her death from cancer in January 1965.

Hansberry's first complete play, A Raisin in the Sun (1959), won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, a first for an African American. It also marked the first time a black woman had a play produced on Broadway. Her second play, The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window (1964), challenged the idea that African Americans should deal exclusively with black subjects.

Hansberry was terminally ill with cancer when this play went into rehearsal but was able intermittently to continue the political activism in which she was engaged her entire life. She also discussed her unfinished work at length with Nemiroff so that he might handle its appearance.

Lorraine Hansberry's life and work were distinguished by a commitment to ameliorating social injustice. Although she prioritized her attention in favor of black freedom and world peace, she also addressed the issue of gay liberation. In August 1957, she wrote two letters to the fledgling lesbian periodical, The Ladder, in which she supported the emerging American lesbian liberation movement. She endorsed women's need for their own publications and praised The Ladder.

Most interesting, she connected and antifeminism, calling for analyses of ethical questions implicit in the social and moral inequities produced by patriarchal culture. In these letters, she condemned homosexual persecution as having its roots in social ignorance but also speculated that it owed something to "a philosophically active anti-feminist dogma."

In The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window, she links sexuality and creativity. Some critics have misread David, the homosexual character who is a dramatist, as a negative portrayal. However, in spite of his immaturity, he is a positive image of commitment, artistic creativity, and meaningful sexuality. He is humanly complex, and the play makes a plea for maturity in sexuality, whatever form it takes.

For Lorraine Hansberry, theater was a means of exploring inner conflicts and of demanding broader opportunities for the expression of human potential. Homosexuality was a subject about which she wrote and thought. When Margaret Wilkerson's biography, currently being written, appears, more will be known of the place of homosexuality in the dramatist's life. In any case, Hansberry's work gives evidence of her significant breaking away from stereotypical characterizations and of her willingness to take homosexuality seriously.

Most gay, lesbian, and bisexual American writers who adhered to Marxist-oriented parties and social movements between 1917 and the 1960s strove to hide their sexual orientation, and some even depicted homosexuals negatively in their fiction and drama.