Lorraine is from the historical French province of *Lorraine* — itself from the medieval Latin *Lotharingia*, the kingdom of Lothair II established 855 CE. **Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965)** — **African American playwright whose *A Raisin in the Sun* (1959) — written when she was 28 — became the first play by a Black woman ever produced on Broadway and the first Broadway play directed by a Black director (Lloyd Richards)**. **Won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Play (1959), beating works by Tennessee Williams, Eugene O'Neill, and Archibald MacLeish — the youngest American and first Black writer to win the prize**. **The play's title is from Langston Hughes's poem *Harlem*: "What happens to a dream deferred?"**. **Died of pancreatic cancer at 34**. **A top-100 US baby name from 1933 to 1957**.
Subject of *Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart* (2017 PBS American Masters documentary).
Lorraine reduces to eight — the number of A Raisin in the Sun.