2023: 1930 Chronology: Appendix 28: Dolores Shockley, The First African American Woman to Receive a Doctorate in Pharmacology

Appendix 28

 Dolores Shockley

 The First African American Woman

 to Receive a 

Doctorate in Pharmacology 

Dolores Cooper Shockley (b. April 21, 1930, Clarksdale, Mississippi – d. October 10, 2020, Nashville, Tennessee) was the first black woman to receive a PhD in pharmacology in the United States and one of the first African American students to receive a PhD from Purdue University.  After obtaining her PhD she became faculty at the historically black school Meharry Medical College where she subsequently became the first black woman to chair a Pharmacology department in the United States in 1988. Her research contributions included studying the effects of chemical pollutants on the brain and identifying pharmacological agents that interact with drugs of abuse such as cocaine. She was a distinguished scholar and emeritus professor at Meharry Medical College. 

Dolores Cooper Shockley was born in 1930 in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Shockley grew up in a segregated society in the small rural town of Clarksdale, Mississippi, where at the time black and white children attended racially segregated schools. Shockley said in an interview that her school in Clarksdale had very few school supplies and that she learned her science from chemistry sets at home. Motivated by the lack of a drug store to serve the black community in Clarksdale, Shockley decided to pursue a degree in pharmacology during college with the initial idea of starting a pharmacy in her hometown although she later decided to pursue a research career.

Shockley attended Xavier University of Louisiana where she completed a bachelor's degree in pharmacology in 1951. She decided to pursue a graduate degree and attended Purdue University from 1951 to 1955 where she became one of the first black students to receive a PhD from the institution. During graduate school she experienced racism when trying to rent a room outside campus. During an interview Shockley said that while at West Lafayette, Indiana some people refused to serve her. About this Shockley said 

"This was extremely hurtful because you never knew when you would be rejected or refused. I went to my room and cried several times. But my zealous commitment to succeed propelled me to work harder to overcome my lack of prior experience." 

While Shockley was at Purdue University in  the 1950s black students were not allowed to get haircuts at the student center.  This discrimination prompted Shockley and other students to petition the president to reverse this.  In addition, Shockley became an activist in her community by joining a group of diversity students called "Panel of Americans", which consisted of a group of students from different ethnicities and races that visited churches and community organizations to talk about how they too were Americans. Regarding her work in this student group Shockley said 

"I believe or hope that we dispelled some of the fallacy of racial, ethnic and religious inferiority".

Shockley became the first black woman to receive a PhD in Pharmacology. After finishing her PhD she received a Fulbright Fellowship and worked with Knud Moller at the Pharmacology Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark from 1955 to 1957. When Shockley returned to the United States she was offered a job at Meharry Medical College in Tennessee as an assistant professor. When Shockley complained that her salary offer was lower than that of all men, her department chair said that as a married woman she did not deserve the same salary. Despite these challenges she continued to fight for salary equity. 

In 1967, Shockley became an associate professor at Meharry and, in 1988, she became the chair of the Pharmacology Department making her the first black woman to be the chair of a Pharmacology Department in the United States. During her time as a chairperson Shockley focused on improving the Pharmacology PhD program funding and training quality at Meharry.  In efforts to expand training opportunities for students at her institution, Shockley started a collaboration with Vanderbilt University in which they shared student seminar series and department retreats. The PhD Program at Meharry led by Shockley awarded degrees to the majority of black pharmacologists in the country. Shockley served on many national committees including NIH, NSF, NRC, and FDA committees and held office in the American Society of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET).

Shockley had two main lines of research, one related to neurotoxicity of pollutants and one related to identifying pharmacological agents that interact with cocaine with the goal of developing therapies for drug abuse. Shockley studied how pollutants such as benzo(a)pyrene and flouranthene affect the nervous system. Her research showed that these pollutants have neurotoxic and behavioral effects.  Furthermore, her research showed that the effects of benzo(a)pyrene, which is present in tobacco smoke and grilled meats, are mediated by oxidative stress. In addition, Shockley researched how calcium blockers affect the neurotoxic and behavioral effects of stimulants, such as cocaine, with the goal of identifying a potential pharmacological agent to act as antidote to cocaine toxicity. Her research identified that Isradipine, a calcium channel antagonist, decreased the behavioral effects of cocaine in rats.

During an interview in 1997 Shockley was asked what her biggest accomplishment in science was to which she said being an educator and the work she did to improve the PhD training program at Meharry, which was serving a predominantly African American student population.  Related to her contributions Shockley said  

“I’ve tried to reinstate and strongly promote graduate education [at Meharry]. About half of all the minority PhD's in pharmacology have come from our program. I think this will be my greatest contribution".

Shockley was a distinguished alumni for Xavier University of Louisiana and Purdue University. Shockley received the Lederle Faculty Award from 1963 to 1966. Many scientific organizations and societies have created awards in Shockley's honor. In 2010, the American Society of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics established a travel award in her honor for underrepresented students to attend their Annual meeting. In 2009, The Dolores C. Shockley Lectureship and Mentoring Award was inaugurated at the School of Medicine, Vanderbilt University, in honor of the collaborative work Shockley did with the department of Pharmacology at Vanderbilt. In 2017, the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology presented the Dolores Shockley Minority Mentoring Award to recognize college members who have successfully mentored young scientists from underrepresented minorities in the field of neuropsychopharmacology. 

Dr. Dolores C. Shockley married Dr. Thomas E. Shockley, a microbiologist. Shockley had four children and was married for 43 years until Thomas died.  Shockley died on October 10, 2020 in Nashville, Tennessee.

2023: 1930 Chronology: Appendix 27: Faith Ringgold, Painter, Sculptor, Author, Performance Artist, and Civil Rights Activist

Appendix 27

 Faith Ringgold

 Painter, Sculptor, Author, Performance Artist

 and 

Civil Rights Activist

Faith Ringgold (b. October 8, 1930, New York, New York - d. April 13, 2024, Englewood, New Jersey), was an artist and author who became famous for innovative, quilts that communicate her political beliefs.

Faith Ringgold was born the youngest of three children on October 8, 1930, in Harlem Hospital, New York City. Her parents, Andrew Louis Jones and Willi Posey Jones, were descendants of working-class families displaced by the Great Migration.  Ringgold's mother, a fashion designer, and her father, an avid storyteller, raised their daughter in an environment that encouraged her creativity. After the Harlem Renaissance, Ringgold's childhood home in Harlem became surrounded by a thriving arts scene - where figures such as Duke Ellington and Langston Hughes lived just around the corner. Her childhood friend, Sonny Rollins, who would grow up to be a prominent jazz musician, often visited her family and practiced saxophone at their parties.  Because of her chronic asthma, Ringgold explored visual art as a major pastime through the support of her mother, often experimenting with crayons as a young girl. She also learned how to sew and work creatively with fabric from her mother.  Ringgold's future artwork was greatly affected by the people, poetry, and music she experienced in her childhood, as well as by the racism, sexism, and segregation she dealt with in her everyday life.

In 1950, due to pressure from her family, Ringgold enrolled at the City College of New York to major in art, but was forced to major in art education instead, as City College only allowed women to be enrolled in certain majors.  The same year, she also married a jazz pianist named Robert Earl Wallace and had two children, Michele and Barbara Faith Wallace. Ringgold and Wallace separated four years later due to his heroin addiction. In the meantime, she studied with artists Robert Gwathmey and Yasuo Kuniyoshi.  She was also introduced to printmaker Robert Blackburn, with whom she would collaborate on a series of prints 30 years later.

In 1955, Ringgold received her bachelor's degree from City College and soon afterward taught in the New York City public school system. In 1959, she received her master's degree from City College and left with her mother and daughters on her first trip to Europe. While travelling abroad in Paris, Florence, and Rome, Ringgold visited many museums, including the Louvre. This museum in particular inspired her future series of quilt paintings known as the French Collection. This trip was abruptly cut short, however, due to the untimely death of her brother in 1961. Faith Ringgold, her mother, and her daughters all returned to the United States for his funeral. She subsequently married Burdette Ringgold on May 19, 1962.

By the 1960s, her work had matured, reflecting her burgeoning political consciousness, study of African arts and history, and appreciation for the freedom of form used by her young students.

In 1963, Ringgold began a body of paintings called the American People series, which portrays the civil rights movement from a female perspective. In the 1970s she created African-style masks, painted political posters, lectured frequently at feminist art conferences, and actively sought the racial integration of the New York art world. She originated a demonstration against the Whitney Museum of American Art and helped win admission for black artists to the exhibit schedule at the Museum of Modern Art. In 1970 she co-founded, with one of her daughters, the advocacy group Women Students and Artists for Black Art Liberation. 

Ringgold visited West Africa twice: once in 1976 and again in 1977.  These travels would deeply influence her mask making, doll painting and sculptures.

Among Ringgold's most renowned works, her "story quilts:" were inspired by the Tibetan tankos (paintings framed in cloth) that she viewed on a visit to museums in Amsterdam.  She painted these quilts with narrative images and original stories set in the context of African American history.  Her mother frequently collaborated with he  r on these.  Examples of this work includes Who's Afraid of Aunt Jemima? (1984), Sonny's  (1986), and Tar Beach (1988), which Ringgold adapted into a children's book in 1991.  The latter book, which was named a Caldecott Honor Book in 1992, tells of a young black girl in New York City who dreams about flying.  Ringgold's later books for children include Aunt Harriet's Underground Railroad in the Sky (1992) and My Dream of Martin Luther King (1995).  Her memoirs, We Flew over the Bridge, were published in 1995. 

2023: 1930 Chronology: Appendix 26: Auburn "Pat" Hare, a Memphis Electric Blues Guitarist and Heavy Metal Pioneer

Appendix 26 

Auburn "Pat" Hare

 Memphis Electric Blues Guitarist 

and 

Heavy Metal Pioneer

Auburn "Pat" Hare (b. December 20, 1930, Cherry Valley, Arkansas - September 26, 1980, Saint Paul, Minnesota) was a Memphis electric blues guitarist and singer. His heavily distorted, power chord-driven electric guitar performances in the early 1950s are considered an important precursor of heavy metal music.  His guitar work with Little Junior's Blue Flames had a major influence on the rockabilly style, and his guitar playing on blues records by artists such as Muddy Waters was influential among 1960s British Invasion blues rock bands such as the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds.  

Hare, an African American, was born in Cherry Valley, Arkansas.  He recorded at the Sun Studio in Memphis, Tennessee, serving as a sideman for Howlin' Wolf, James Cotton, Muddy Waters, Bobby Bland and other artists.   Hare was one of the first guitarists to purposely use the effects of distortion in his playing.

In 1951, Hare joined a blues band formed by Junior Parker, called Little Junior's Blue Flames. He played the electric guitar solo on "Love My Baby" (1953), which later inspired the rockabilly style. One of their biggest hits was "Next Time You See Me", which in 1957 reached number 5 on the Billboard R&B chart and number 74 on the Billboard Hot 100 pop chart.

Hare's guitar solo on James Cotton's electric blues record "Cotton Crop Blues" (1954) was the first recorded use of heavily distorted power chords, later an element of heavy metal music. The other side of the single was "Hold Me in Your Arms"; both songs featured a guitar sound so overdriven that with the historical distance of several decades, it now sounds like a direct line to the coarse, distorted tones favored by modern rock players.  

Hare was reported to have been introverted when sober (once married to Dorothy Mae Good, with whom he had a son and two daughters), but he had a serious problem with alcohol abuse.  Shortly after the "Cotton Crop Blues" recording, he recorded a version of the early 1940s Doctor Clayton song "I'm Gonna Murder My Baby" on May 14, 1954, which has since been released on the 1990 Rhino Records compilation album Blue Flames: A Sun Blues Collection. The record also features power chords, which remains most fundamental in modern rock as the basic structure for riff-building in heavy metal bands.

 According to the album liner notes, "I'm Gonna Murder My Baby" is "doubly morbid because he did just that". In December 1963, Hare shot his girlfriend dead in Minneapolis and also shot a policeman who came to investigate.  At the time of his arrest, he was playing in the blues band of Muddy Waters.  

Hare pleaded guilty to murder and spent the last 16 years of his life in prison, where he formed a band named Sounds Incarcerated. He developed lung cancer in prison and died in 1980 in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

2023: 1930 Chronology: Appendix 25: Tu Youyou, 2015 Nobel Prize Recipient in Medicine for Development of Anti-Malarial Drug

 Appendix 25 

Tu Youyou

 2015 Nobel Prize Recipient in Medicine 

for 

Development of Anti-Malarial Drugs

Tu Youyou  (b. December 30, 1930, Ningbo, Zhejiang, China) was a Chinese pharmaceutical chemist and malariologist. She discovered artemisinin (also known as qinghaosu) and dihydroartemisinin, used to treat malaria, a breakthrough in twentieth-century tropical medicine, saving millions of lives in South China, Southeast Asia, South America, and Africa. 

For her work, Tu received the 2011 Lasker Award in clinical medicine and the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with William C. Campbell and Satoshi Omura.  Tu was the first Chinese Nobel laureate in physiology or medicine and the first female citizen of the People's Republic of China to receive a Nobel Prize in any category. She was also the first Chinese person to receive the Lasker Award. Tu was born, educated and carried out her research exclusively in China.

Tu was born in Ningbo, Zhejiang, China, on December 30, 1930.  She attended Xiaoshi Middle School for junior high school and the first year of high school, before transferring to Ningbo Middle School in 1948. A tuberculosis infection interrupted her high school education but inspired her to go into medical research. From 1951 to 1955, she attended Peking University Medical School / Beijing Medical College.  In 1955, Tu graduated from Beijing Medical University School of Pharmacy and continued her research on Chinese herbal medicine in the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences. Tu studied at the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences and graduated in 1955. Later Tu was trained for two and a half years in traditional Chinese medicine. 

After graduation, Tu worked at the Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine (now the China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medical Sciences) in Beijing.

Tu carried on her work in the 1960s and 70s, including during China's Cultural Revolution. 

During her early years in research, Tu studied Lobelia chinensis, a traditional Chinese medicine believed to be useful for treating schistosomiasis, caused by trematodes which infect the urinary tract or the intestines, which was widespread in the first half of the 20th century in South China.

In 1967, during the Vietnam War, President Ho Chi Minh of North Vietnam asked Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai for help in developing a malaria treatment for his soldiers trooping down the Ho Chi Minh trail, where a majority came down with a form of malaria which is resistant to chloroquine.  Because malaria was also a major cause of death in China's southern provinces, especially Guangdong and Guangxi, Zhou Enlai convinced Mao Zedong to set up a secret drug discovery project named Project 523 after its starting date, May 23, 1967.

In early 1969, Tu was appointed head of the Project 523 research group at her institute. Tu was initially sent to Hainan, where she studied patients who had been infected with the disease.

Scientists worldwide had screened over 240,000 compounds without success.  In 1969, Tu, then 39 years old, had an idea of screening Chinese herbs. She first investigated the Chinese medical classics in history, visiting practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine all over the country on her own. She gathered her findings in a notebook called A Collection of Single Practical Prescriptions for Anti-Malaria. Her notebook summarized 640 prescriptions. By 1971, her team had screened over 2,000 traditional Chinese recipes and made 380 herbal extracts, from some 200 herbs, which were tested on mice.

One compound was effective, sweet wormwood (Artemisia annua), which was used for "intermittent fevers," a hallmark of malaria. As Tu also presented at the project seminar, its preparation was described in a 1,600-year-old text, in a recipe titled, "Emergency Prescriptions Kept Up One's Sleeve". At first, it was ineffective because they extracted it with traditional boiling water. Tu discovered that a low-temperature extraction process could be used to isolate an effective anti-malarial substance from the plant.  Tu was also influenced by a traditional Chinese herbal medicine source, The Handbook of Prescriptions for Emergency Treatments, written in 340 by Ge Hong, which states that this herb should be steeped in cold water.  This book instructed the reader to immerse a handful of qinghao in the equivalent of 0.4 liters of water, wring out the juice, and drink it all. After rereading the recipe, Tu realized the hot water had already damaged the active ingredient in the plant. Therefore, she proposed a method using low-temperature ether to extract the effective compound instead.  Animal tests showed it was completely effective in mice and monkeys.

In 1972, Tu and her colleagues obtained the pure substance and named it qinghaosu, or artemisinin in English. This substance saved millions of lives, especially in the developing world.  Tu also studied the chemical structure and pharmacology of artemisinin.  Tu's group first determined the chemical structure of artemisinin. In 1973, Tu was attempting to confirm the carbonyl group in the artemisinin molecule when she accidentally synthesized dihydroartemisinin.  

Tu volunteered to be the first human test subject. It was safe, so she conducted successful clinical trials with human patients. Her work was published anonymously in 1977. In 1981, she presented the findings related to artemisinin at a meeting with the World Health Organization. 

For her work on malaria, Tu Youyou was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine on October 5, 2015.

Tu Youyou was promoted to Researcher, the highest researcher rank in mainland China equivalent to the academic rank of a full professor in 1980, shortly after the beginning of the Chinese economic reform in 1978. In 2001, she was promoted to academic advisor for doctoral candidates. As of 2023, she was the chief scientist of the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences.  

Before 2011, Tu Youyou had been obscure for decades, and was almost completely forgotten by the Chinese people.  However, after receiving the Lasker Prize and the Nobel Prize, today Tu is regarded as the "Three-Without Scientist"^[ – a scientist with no postgraduate degree (there was no postgraduate education then in China), no study or research experience abroad, and no membership in either of the Chinese national academies, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering.  Tu is also now regarded as a representative figure of the first generation of Chinese medical workers after the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949.

2023: 1930 Chronology: Appendix 24: Lorraine Hansberry, African American Playwright Who Wrote "A Raisin in the Sun"

 Appendix 24 

Lorraine Hansberry

African American Playwright 

Who Wrote 

"A Raisin in the Sun"

Lorraine Vivian Hansberry (b. May 19, 1930, Chicago, Illinois – d. January 12, 1965, New York City, New York) was an American playwright and writer. Hansberry inspired Nina Simone's song "To Be Young, Gifted and Black". 

She was the first black woman to write a play performed on Broadway. Her best known work, the play A Raisin in the Sun,  highlights the lives of African Americans living under racial segregation in Chicago. Hansberry's family had struggled against segregation, challenging a restrictive covenant and eventually provoking the Supreme Court case Hansberry v. Lee.  The title of her most famous play was taken from the poem "Harlem" by Langston Hughes: "What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?"

After she moved to New York City, Hansberry worked at the Pan-Africanist newspaper Freedom, where she dealt with intellectuals such as Paul Robeson and W. E. B. Du Bois.  Much of her work during this time concerned the African struggle for liberation and their impact on the world. Hansberry has been identified as a lesbian, and sexual freedom is an important topic in several of her works. She died of cancer at the age of 34.

Lorraine Hansberry was born in a comfortable, middle-class family in Chicago, and was educated at the University of Wisconsisn  and Roosevelt University.  She first appeared in print in Paul Robeson's Freedom, a monthly newspaper, during the early 1950's.  In 1959, A Raisin in the Sun, her first play, was produced on Broadway.  It was among the first full-length African American plays to be taken seriously by a European American audience. 

The success of A Raisin in the Sun catapulted Hansberry to an early fame.  She was expected to be a spokesperson for the African American poor, when in fact she was more attuned to the aspirations of the African American bourgeoisie.  Hansberry was very militant about integration and not supportive of black nationalist or separatist movements.

Lorraine Vivian Hansberry was the first black woman to write a play performed on Broadway. Her best known work, the play A Raisin in the Sun, highlights the lives of Black Americans living under racial segregation in Chicago. Hansberry's family had struggled against segregation, challenging a restrictive covenant and eventually provoking the Supreme Court case Hansberry v. Lee. The title of the play was taken from the poem "Harlem" by Langston Hughes: "What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?"

At the young age of 29, Hansberry won the New York's Drama Critic's Circle Award — making her the first black dramatist, the fifth woman, and the youngest playwright to do so.

After she moved to New York City, Hansberry worked at the Pan-Africanist newspaper Freedom, where she dealt with intellectuals such as Paul Robeson and W. E. B. DuBois. Much of her work during this time concerned the African struggle for liberation and their impact on the world. Hansberry has been identified as a lesbian, and sexual freedom is an important topic in several of her works. She died of cancer at the age of 34. Hansberry inspired Nina Simone's song "To Be Young, Gifted and Black".

Lorraine Hansberry was the youngest of four children born to Carl Augustus Hansberry, a successful real-estate broker, and Nannie Louise (born Perry) a driving school teacher and ward committeewoman. In 1938, her father bought a house in the Washington Park Subdivision of the South Side of Chicago, incurring the wrath of their white neighbors. The latter's legal efforts to force the Hansberry family out culminated in the United States Supreme Court's decision in Hansberry v. Lee. The restrictive covenant was ruled contestable, though not inherently invalid. Carl Hansberry was also a supporter of the Urban League and NAACP in Chicago. Both Hansberrys were active in the Chicago Republican Party. Carl died in 1946, when Lorraine was fifteen years old; "American racism helped kill him," she later said.

The Hansberrys were routinely visited by prominent Black intellectuals, including W. E. B. DuBois and Paul Robeson. Carl Hansberry's brother, William Leo Hansberry, founded the African Civilization section of the history department at Howard University. Lorraine was taught: ‘‘Above all, there were two things which were never to be betrayed: the family and the race.’’

Hansberry became the godmother to Nina Simone's daughter Lisa—now Simone.

Hansberry graduated from Betsy Ross Elementary in 1944 and from Englewood High School in 1948. She attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she immediately became politically active and integrated a dormitory.

She worked on Henry A. Wallace's presidential campaign in 1948, despite her mother's disapproval. She spent the summer of 1949 in Mexico, studying painting at the University of Guadalajara.

She decided in 1950 to leave Madison and pursue her career as a writer in New York City, where she attended The New School. She moved to Harlem in 1951 and became involved in activist struggles such as the fight against evictions.

In 1951, she joined the staff of the black newspaper Freedom, edited by Louis E. Burnham and published by Paul Robeson.  At Freedom, she worked with W. E. B. Du Bois, whose office was in the same building, and other Black Pan-Africanists. At the newspaper, she worked as subscription clerk, receptionist, typist and editorial assistant in addition to writing news articles and editorials.

One of her first reports covered the Sojourners for Truth and Justice convened in Washington, D.C., by Mary Church Terrell.  She traveled to Georgia to cover the case of Willie McGee, and was inspired to write the poem "Lynchsong" about his case.

She worked not only on the United States civil rights movement, but also on global struggles against colonialism and imperialism. Hansberry wrote in support of the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya, criticizing the mainstream press for its biased coverage.

Hansberry often clarified these global struggles by explaining them in terms of female participants. She was particularly interested in the situation of Egypt, "the traditional Islamic 'cradle of civilization,' where women had led one of the most important fights anywhere for the equality of their sex."

In 1952, Hansberry attended a peace conference in Montevideo, Uruguay, in place of Paul Robeson, who had been denied travel rights by the State Department.

On June 20, 1953, Hansberry married Robert Nemiroff, a Jewish publisher, songwriter and political activist. Hansberry and Nemiroff moved to Greenwich Village, the setting of The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window.  Success of the song "Cindy, Oh Cindy", co-authored by Nemiroff, enabled Hansberry to start writing full-time. On the night before their wedding in 1953, Nemiroff and Hansberry protested the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in NYC.

It is widely believed that Hansberry was a closeted lesbian, a theory supported by her secret writings in letters and personal notebooks. She was an activist for gay rights and wrote about feminism and homophobia, joining the Daughters of Bilitis and contributing two letters to their magazine, The Ladder, in 1957 under her initials "LHN." She separated from her husband at this time, but they continued to work together.

A Raisin in the Sun was written at this time and completed in 1957.

Opening on March 11, 1959, A Raisin in the Sun became the first play written by an African American woman to be produced on Broadway.  The 29-year-old author became the youngest American playwright and only the fifth woman to receive the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play. Over the next two years, Raisin was translated into 35 languages and was being performed all over the world.

Hansberry wrote two screenplays of Raisin, both of which were rejected as controversial by Columbia Pictures. Commissioned by NBC in 1960 to create a television program about slavery, Hansberry wrote The Drinking Gourd. This script was also rejected.

In 1960, during Delta Sigma Theta's 26th national convention in Chicago, Hansberry was made an honorary member.

In 1961, Hansberry was set to replace Vinnette Carroll as the director of the musical Kicks and Co, after its try-out at Chicago's McCormick Place. It was written by Oscar Brown, Jr. and featured an interracial cast including Lonnie Sattin, Nichelle Nichols, Vi Velasco, Al Freeman, Jr., Zabeth Wilde and Burgess Meredith in the title role of Mr. Kicks. A satire involving miscegenation, the $400,000 production was co-produced by her husband Robert Nemiroff. Despite a warm reception in Chicago, the show never made it to Broadway.

In 1963, Hansberry participated in a meeting with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, set up by James Baldwin. 

Also in 1963, Hansberry was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She underwent two operations, on June 24 and August 2. Neither was successful in removing the cancer.

On March 10, 1964, Hansberry and Nemiroff divorced but continued to work together.

While many of her other writings were published in her lifetime—essays, articles, and the text for the SNCC book The Movement — the only other play given a contemporary production was The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window. The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window ran for 101 performances on Broadway and closed the night she died.

Hansberry was an atheist.

Hansberry believed that gaining civil rights in the United States and obtaining independence in colonial Africa were two sides of the same coin that presented similar challenges for Africans on both sides of the Atlantic. In response to the independence of Ghana, led by Kwame Nkrumah, Hansberry wrote: "The promise of the future of Ghana is that of all the colored peoples of the world; it is the promise of freedom."

Regarding tactics, Hansberry said Blacks "must concern themselves with every single means of struggle: legal, illegal, passive, active, violent and non-violent.... They must harass, debate, petition, give money to court struggles, sit-in, lie-down, strike, boycott, sing hymns, pray on steps—and shoot from their windows when the racists come cruising through their communities."

In a Town Hall debate on June 15, 1964, Hansberry criticized white liberals who could not accept civil disobedience, expressing a need "to encourage the white liberal to stop being a liberal and become an American radical." At the same time, she said, "some of the first people who have died so far in this struggle have been white men."

The Federal Bureau of Investigation began surveillance of Hansberry when she prepared to go to the Montevideo peace conference. The Washington, D.C. office searched her passport files "in an effort to obtain all available background material on the subject, any derogatory information contained therein, and a photograph and complete description," while officers in Milwaukee and Chicago examined her life history. Later, an FBI reviewer of Raisin in the Sun highlighted its Pan-Africanist themes as dangerous.

Hansberry, a heavy smoker her whole life, died of pancreatic cancer on January 12, 1965, aged 34. James Baldwin believed "it is not at all farfetched to suspect that what she saw contributed to the strain which killed her, for the effort to which Lorraine was dedicated is more than enough to kill a man."

Hansberry's funeral was held in Harlem on January 15, 1965. Paul Robeson and SNCC organizer James Forman gave eulogies. The presiding minister, Eugene Callender, recited messages from Baldwin and the Martin Luther King, Jr. which read: "Her creative ability and her profound grasp of the deep social issues confronting the world today will remain an inspiration to generations yet unborn." The 15th was also Dr. King's birthday. Hansberry was buried at Asbury United Methodist Church Cemetery in Croton-on-Hudson, New York.

 

Hansberry's ex-husband, Robert Nemiroff, became the executor for several unfinished manuscripts. He added minor changes to complete the play Les Blancs, and he adapted many of her writings into the play To Be Young, Gifted and Black, which was the longest-running Off Broadway play of the 1968–69 season. It appeared in book form the following year under the title To Be Young, Gifted and Black: Lorraine Hansberry in Her Own Words. She left behind an unfinished novel and several other plays, including The Drinking Gourd and What Use Are Flowers?, with a range of content, from slavery to a post-apocalyptic future.

Raisin, a musical based on A Raisin in the Sun,  opened in New York in 1973, winning the Tony Award for Best Musical, with the book by Nemiroff, music by Judd Woldin, and lyrics by Robert Britten. A Raisin in the Sun was revived on Broadway in 2004 and received a Tony Award nomination for Best Revival of a Play. The cast included Sean Combs ("P Diddy") as Walter Lee Younger Jr., Phylicia Rashad (Tony Award-winner for Best Actress) and Audra McDonald (Tony Award-winner for Best Featured Actress).  It was produced for television in 2008 with the same cast, garnering two NAACP Image Awards.

Nina Simone first released a song about Hansberry in 1969 called "To Be Young, Gifted and Black".  The title of the song refers to the title of Hansberry's autobiography, which Hansberry first coined when speaking to the winners of a creative writing conference on May 1, 1964, "though it be a thrilling and marvelous thing to be merely young and gifted in such times, it is doubly so, doubly dynamic — to be young, gifted and black." Simone wrote the song with a poet named Weldon Irvine and told him that she wanted lyrics that would "make black children all over the world feel good about themselves forever." When Irvine read the lyrics after it was finished, he thought, "I didn't write this. God wrote it through me." In a recorded introduction to the song, Simone explained the difficulty of losing a close friend and talented artist.

Patricia and Frederick McKissack wrote a children's biography of Hansberry, Young, Black, and Determined, in 1998.

In 1999, Hansberry was posthumously inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame.

In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Hansberry as one of his 100 Greatest African Americans.

The Lorraine Hansberry Theatre of San Francisco, which specializes in original stagings and revivals of African-American theatre, is named in her honor. Singer and pianist Nina Simone,  who was a close friend of Hansberry, used the title of her unfinished play to write a civil rights-themed song "To Be Young, Gifted and Black" together with Weldon Irvine. The single reached the top 10 on the R&B charts. A studio recording by Simone was released as a single and the first live recording on October 26, 1969, was captured on Black Gold (1970).

In 2013 Hansberry was inducted into the Legacy Walk, an outdoor public display which celebrates LGBT history and people.

 

In 2013, Lorraine Hansberry was posthumously inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame.

2023: 1930 Chronology: Appendix 23: Jessie Isabelle Price, The Duck Doctor

 Jessie Isabelle Price (b. January 1, 1930, Montrose, Pennsylvania – November 12, 2015, Madison, Wisconsin) was a veterinary microbiologist. She isolated and reproduced the cause of the most common life-threatening disease in duck farming in the 1950s and developed vaccines for this and other avian diseases.  A graduate of Cornell University, where she earned a PhD (1959), she worked first at the Cornell Duck Research Laboratory and later at the United States Geological Survey (USGS) National Wildlife Health Center.  She served as chair of the Predoctoral Minority Fellowship Ad Hoc Review Committee of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM), and as president of Graduate Women in Science.

Jessie Price was born in Montrose, Pennsylvania.  Her mother, Teresa Price, raised her daughter on her own in difficult financial circumstances.  Price was the only African-American in her class, at a school where there were only two other Black students. After graduating from Montrose High School, she was accepted into Cornell University, moving with her mother to Ithaca to take advanced high classes in mathematics and English for a year. Tuition fees were waived because of her New York residency and grades. She wanted to be a physician, but could not because of the cost. Price received a Bachelor of Science in the College of Agriculture in 1953.

Her mentor, Dorsey Bruner, recommended post-graduate studies, but finances prohibited it. Price worked for three years as a laboratory technician in the Poultry Disease Research Farm in the Veterinary College at Cornell to save for further study. She obtained research assistant support for 1956 to 1959, receiving a Masters in 1958, and a doctorate in 1959, supervised by Bruner. Her Master's thesis was "Morphological and Cultural Studies of Pleuropneumonia-like Organisms and Their Variants Isolated from Chickens".

For her doctoral dissertation, Price isolated and reproduced the bacterium, Pasteurella anatipestifer, in white pekin ("Long Island") ducklings infected with a disease that was a major killer among duck farmers at that time. Her dissertation was published by Cornell University in 1959.

After her PhD, Price joined the Cornell Duck Research Laboratory, where she worked from 1959 to 1977, teaching at Long Island University, where she became an adjunct professor. She worked on developing a vaccine, undertaking trials of mixed flocks of vaccinated and unvaccinated ducklings, working every day, and conducting daily autopsies. In 1964, Ebony magazine featured Price and her work in an extensive photo-essay describing and showing her work on vaccine development, in the Duck Research Laboratory and on the farm.  Price described the heavy workload, made more onerous by the four-mile distance between the laboratory and farm where the flocks of ducklings were managed.

Long Island "New Duck Disease" is an infectious disease affecting primarily ducklings, with a high mortality rate. In 1956, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported that it was "the most important disease problem of the duck industry", with losses of up to 75% of populations. For her doctoral work, Price isolated and reproduced Pasteurella anatipestifer, an essential step for vaccine development.

While at the Cornell Duck Research Laboratory, she began working on vaccine development for Pasteurella anatipestifer for white pekin ducks, which she would continue in avian cholera and tuberculosis (TB) for various species through her career.  Some of the vaccines were commercially developed. She worked with national and international colleagues, publishing on Pasteurella anatipestifer in pheasants, medication for bacterial infections in ducklings, Pasteurella multocida in Nebraska wetlands and in snow geese. 

In 1966, Price was awarded a National Science Foundation travel grant to present her findings at the International Congress for Microbiology in Moscow. By 1974, she had developed an injectable vaccine and was moving on to studying oral vaccination.  She moved to the USGS National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin in 1977, and the study of environmental contaminants and diseases in wildlife, especially water fowl.

Her professional activities included serving as chair of the Predoctoral Minority Fellowship Ad Hoc Review Committee of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM), as well as its Summer Research Fellowship and Travel Award Program. Price was also a member of the ASM's Committee on the Status of Minority Microbiologists and its Committee on the Status of Women Microbiologists. She was also  active in Graduate Women in Science (also called Sigma Delta Epsilon), serving as national president from 1974 to 1975, after being national second vice-president (1972-1973), as well as on the national board of directors (1976-1980).

Price was a dog-lover and breeder, with a prize-winning Corgi in the 1960s. Her other favorite pastimes were photography, music, and travel.

Price died of Lewy body dementia on November 12, 2015, in Madison, Wisconsin, and was buried in Quoque Cemetery on Long Island. 

2023: 1930 Chronology: Appendix 22: Willie Thrower, The First African American National Football League Quarterback

APPENDIX 22

WILLIE THROWER

THE FIRST AFRICAN AMERICAN

NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE

QUARTERBACK

 Willie Lee Thrower (b. March 22, 1930, New Kensington, Pennsylvania – d. February 20, 2002, New Kensington, Pennsylvania) was an American football quarterback. Born near Pittsburgh in New Kensington, Pennsylvania, Thrower was known as "Mitts" for his large hands and arm strength compared to his 5'11" frame.  He was known to be able to toss a football 70 yards.  Thrower was part of the 1952 Michigan State Spartans who won the national championship.  He became the first African American to appear at the quarterback position in the National Football League (NFL), playing for the Chicago Bears in 1953.

 

Thrower played halfback in the single-wing formation for New Kensington High (present-name: Valley High School) as a freshman just after the end of World War II in 1945. Single wing halfbacks received a direct center snap, and then had run, handoff, or pass options. The team lost 2 games. However, head coach Don Fletcher moved Thrower to quarterback. From his sophomore to senior years, New Kensington won 24 straight games, including the 1946 and 1947 Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League (WPIAL) Class AA championships. As quarterback, Thrower would only lose one game in his career. As a dual-threat quarterback, Thrower was also an All-WPIAL and all-state first team honors, and he was named captain for an All-American scholastic selection covering the nation east of the Mississippi River. His final high school record was 35-3-1.

Despite his accomplishments, Thrower still experienced racism. In 1947, the Miami, Florida Peanut Bowl, featuring top high school teams around the country, rescinded the invitation it had extended to New Kensington High School to play in the annual prep classic game when organizers saw a photograph of its star. In addition, many colleges opted not to extend Thrower a scholarship when they discovered his ethnicity.

After graduating, Thrower chose to play collegiate football for the Michigan State Spartans alongside some of his high school teammates William Horrell, Joseph Klein, Renaldo Kozikowski, Vincent Pisano, and the Tamburo brothers, Harry and Richard. He would remain in East Lansing from 1949–1952, competing for playing time at quarterback with All-Americans Al Dorow and Tom Yewcic.  Under head coach Clarence "Biggie" Munn, Thrower became the first black quarterback to play in the Big Ten Conference in 1950 in his first year of varsity eligibility (NCAA rules dictated no freshman on varsity preventing Thrower, who was a freshman in 1949, to play) although during the first two years of his varsity career, he only attempted 14 passes.

During the 1952 championship season, Thrower was an integral part of the title run, completing 59 percent of his passes (29-of-43) for 400 yards and five touchdowns. In a crucial game with Notre Dame, Thrower stepped in for an injured Tom Yewcic and threw a touchdown in a 21-3 win. In his final game in a Spartan uniform, Thrower completed seven of his 11 attempts for 71 yards and a touchdown, and added a rushing touchdown in a dominating 62-13 win over Marquette that sealed the nation's No. 1 ranking, and championship, for Michigan State.

Although Thrower was not drafted in 1953,  he was offered a one year, $8,500 contract with the Chicago Bears. He became the backup quarterback and roommate to future Pro Football Hall of Famer George Blanda.

As a professional, Thrower did not play until October 18, 1953 against the San Francisco 49ers.  Bears coach George Halas was unhappy with Blanda's play and pulled him, sending in Thrower. He moved the team to the 15-yard line of the 49ers, but was denied a chance to score a touchdown when Halas put Blanda back into the game. The Bears eventually lost the game 35-28. Thrower completed 3 out of 8 passes for 27 yards, and had one interception. He would only play one more game for the Bears, who released Thrower after the 1953 season.

In 1979, Thrower was elected to the Westmoreland County Sports Hall of Fame. In 1981, he was inducted into AK Valley Hall of Fame. In 2003, an official state marker was dedicated to him in his high school. In 2011, he was inducted into the WPIAL Hall of Fame. Although, Thrower was the first African-American quarterback in the NFL, Fritz Pollard was the first African American to play on a championship team (1920), as well as the first African American quarterback (1923) and coach (1919).

Thrower died of a heart attack in New Kensington, Pennsylvania on February 20, 2002, at the age of 71.

In 2006, a statue of Thrower was erected near Valley High School in New Kensington to honor his accomplishments. The statue was unveiled during a Valley High School football game in September attended by Pittsburgh Steelers owner Dan Rooney as well as Thrower's family. Willie Thrower was also mentioned by former NFL quarterback Warren Moon in his Pro Football Hall of Fame acceptance speech. Moon thanked Thrower, among others, for giving him inspiration during a time when few African-Americans played the quarterback position in the NFL.