Classic Films at the Ferguson: A Raisin in the Sun (1961)

Screening of Daniel Petrie's A Raisin in the Sun from 1961, starring Sidney Poitier and Claudia McNeil.

This is the second screening in the new classic film series at the Ferguson Library. Each month we will screen a classic and noteworthy title from film history.

Not rated. 

Lorraine Hansberry’s immortal A Raisin in the Sun was the first play by a black woman to be performed on Broadway. Two years later, the production came to the screen, directed by Daniel Petrie. Here, the original stars—including Sidney Poitier and Ruby Dee—reprise their roles as members of an African American family living in a cramped Chicago apartment in this deeply resonant tale of dreams deferred. The Youngers await a life insurance check they hope will change their circumstances, but tensions arise over how to use the money. Vividly rendering Hansberry’s sharp observations on generational conflict and housing discrimination, Petrie’s film captures the high stakes, shifting currents and varieties of experience within Black life in midcentury America.