In May 1959, Lorraine Hans­berry, suddenly famous though still a week away from her 29th birthday, was interviewed on the radio by the great Studs Terkel. It was two months after a landmark event in theater history: the opening of “A Raisin in the Sun’’ at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in New York, which made Hansberry the first African-American woman playwright ever to be produced on Broadway.

When Terkel noted the positive response to her play, Hansberry quickly broadened the focus: “I think it reflects at this particular moment in our country — as troubled and as depressed as I, for one, am about so much of it — it reflects a new mood. We went through eight to 10 years of misery under [Joseph] McCarthy and all that nonsense, and to the great credit of the American people they got rid of it.’’