Lorraine Hansberry becomes first Black author with consecutive Broadway plays

With the opening of The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window in October 1964, Lorraine Hansberry became the first Black playwright to have two plays produced on Broadway. Hansberry, who had already made history as the first Black woman to have a play on Broadway with A Raisin in the Sun in 1959, was a central figure of mid-century American theater. She died of cancer in January 1965 at age 34, leaving behind a radical literary and activist legacy.