The Struggle to Realize the Promise of Young Black Families

Raisin in the Sun (1961, Lorraine Hansberry)

Claudine (1974, Lester Pine, Tina Pine)

From the 1920’s through the 1970’s black Americans migrated from the Southern states to Northern cities in the hope of attaining something that had eluded them since they’d been stolen from their homes and families in Africa: The American Dream. The movies A Raisin In The Sun and Claudine are a depiction of what happened when the dream was, too difficult to attain. In A Raisin In The Sun a family struggles in New York to attain a home. Living in a tenement and sharing a bathroom with other tenants on their floor, the matriarch of the family, Lena, hopes to put her family in a house the way her late husband wanted. Her son, Walter Lee, struggles with the unrealized dreams of an under educated black man of the 1950’s.  They each reach, Lena with dignity and Walter Lee with desperation, for the basic opportunities afforded in the same society to their white counterparts. Wanting to heal her son of his frustration Lena makes the decision use $10,000 from her husband’s life insurance to purchase a home in an all white neighborhood for her family, but Walter Lee, lost in his anger and resentment convinces his mother to give him some of the money for a business venture. His “partner” steals the money.

The question for many viewing the film has always been why did Lena give her son the money? Even today there is much discussion as to whether Lena really expected a different outcome? Though the questions may never be adequately answered, what is known is that before the fictional Walter Lee there has existed many a black man who has been discouraged by their lack of opportunity and promise. These men have wanted to financially provide for their families, without ever having to “shuck and jive” or lose their dignity to a white man’s disrespect and mistreatment. This has been a goal of every minority male.

For a millennium, everyman’s dream for himself, black and white, is that he be viewed as a provider and hero to his family; and Lena knowing that gave, her son an opportunity and $6500 of their small fortune, to be that hero and provider. But with his promised unrealized and his desperation high, Walter Lee lost the money. Though the family eventually bands together to purchase their home, Walter Lee’s potential remains untapped, and what he has learned is that no price can be paid on his family’s dreams or their potential.  

In Claudine, Claudine lives on welfare in a four-room apartment with her six children. Having been married twice before and procreated without being married, Claudine struggles to make ends meet and provide for her family. She is hamstrung by her lack of education and the rules of the social welfare system that hampers her ability to move ahead. Unable to leave the system, but dying to be freed from the control and intrusiveness, Claudine’s true potential remains untapped. And when she sees her oldest son and daughter become despondent over the trajectory of their lives in the ghetto, Claudine gambles. She gambles on love with a garbage man, Simpson, with his own family issues and financial constraints. He loves her and in the end they make the commitment to live and worry together about the catch-22 her family is in, and the affect on all of her children. Claudine and Simpson choose to realize the family’s potential together.

When Claudine and A Raisin In The Sun premiered many black men and women saw their lives and their families on the screen, and realized it wasn’t just them feeling that their lives and potential were unrealized. The world was able to see the struggles of the black family in America. And though there is judgment about whether the situations are self-created, one thing could not be disputed: the black community was in trouble.