Racial discrimination is a crucial element of American civilization. Even after African-Americans gained their freedom from slavery after the end of the Civil War, they still faced a strong racial prejudice from the majority of white people throughout the nation, since the 13th Amendment of the United States Constitution only outlawed slavery, but did not provide equal rights and citizenship's to African-Americans. "In A Raisin in the Sun", Lorraine Hansberry wants to portray segregation "the self-enforced separation of the whites and the blacks in housing neighborhoods that were legal and widespread throughout the Southern and Northern states of America. The plot in this play is a depiction of Hansberry's personal life, where her family received threats of violence and legal actions from their neighbors when they moved into an all white neighborhood. She tells her mother that "A Raisin in the Sun" is a play that tells the truth about people, Negroes and life and I think it will help a lot of people to understand how we are just as complicated and mixed up as they are " (Adams 1). .
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In the play, Hansberry also expands the idea of Langston Hughes's famous 1951 poem "Harlem " by showing the deferred dreams of people like the main family in the play, dreams that should not be allowed to dry up. With the inequality of civil rights that African-Americans endured at that time, the Youngers are trapped between the pitfalls and hopes that the American dream offers. This essay will describe segregation as an obstacle to human development, because it prevents human beings from expressing and pursuing their goals. .
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The time setting of the play is just before the big thrust of the African-American Civil Rights Movement in the early 1950's. The tension between the need for black expression and American society's oppression of its black population that causes the impossibility of that expression was progressively reaching its peak.