"A Raisin in the Sun" by Lorraine Hansberry is a revolutionary work for its time. It is one of the first plays involving a black family that tried to focus on a mostly black audience in the United States during the Nineteen fifties and sixties. Before this play was released the roles from black people on stage were mostly small and often times not serious roles. Hansberry put blacks in important and serious roles for one of the first times in America's long history. The play makes the reader think about the racial issues of its day and how tensions between "White" and "Colored" people influenced the Younger family. One of the most influenced characters in the play was Walter Lee Younger. He had to make decisions for his family based on his past history and the pressures that the "White" people were putting on him. .
Walter Lee knew that because he was a black man from a poor neighborhood in Chicago that he would need to catch a few breaks to make some money and impress his family. He tries to do this by taking an insurance check that the family received and investing it in a liquor store with two friends. One of these "friends" ends up running off with the money never to be seen again.
The biggest conflict between a white man and Walter occurs towards the end of the play. Walter's mother, Lena Younger, used a portion of the insurance check to put down a large payment on a home in an all white neighborhood. At first Walter was against moving out of their small and overcrowded apartment. Walter thinks that they should stay where they are and he should used the money to open his liquor store. After Walter losses the money for his store a white mane named Karl Lindner offers to pay the family a large amount of money if they do not move into the white neighborhood. Walter does not tell any of his family members and contemplates to himself whether to accept the money and stay in the small apartment in the "ghetto" or to start a new life in the white neighborhood.