Nguyen 1
Kathy Nguyen
Harrison
English II
17 March 2015
A Raisin in the Sun & “
I Have a Dream”
The play,
A Raisin in the Sun portrays the life of a colored family that have had many issues with racism within society. The problems that they have faced have also been shown and mentioned in “
I Have a Dream” by Martin Luther King. Both works contribute to the same idea that life for Black Americans were very different than those of White Americans. Lorraine
Hansberry’s play
A Raisin in the Sun
, and Martin Luther King’s, “
I Have a Dream” both have similar ideas that colored people are in poor financial economic conditions, facing inequality, and having issues with moral and ethics that portray how society views African Americans.
The first similar idea in both works include poor financial economic conditions.
A Raisin in the Sun demonstrates a colored family that is going through financial problems. The Younger family is a hard­working African­American family who has lived in the same apartment for over
40 years because they do not make enough money to buy a new house. In “
I Have a Dream
,”
Martin Luther King mentioned: “America has given the Negro people a bad cheque which has come back marked ‘insufficient funds.’” Another example of how the family is poor is that
Walter’s wife, Ruth, had found out that she is pregnant but is afraid that the child will cause more financial issues for the family. King has also stated, “One hundred years later, the Negro lives on

Nguyen 2 a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.” He is trying to say that African Americans are still struggling with poverty. in America. Walter Lee, for example, lost the money from his father’s insurance that caused his family to have financial tension.
The second similar idea demonstrated in both works include inequality. There were a lot of racism and segregation around the time when both works were taken place which is around
1950 and 1963. King states, “ I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia and the sons of former slaves and the son of former slave­owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.” King’s speech focuses on trying to change the mindset of society to give colored people equal rights. He states in his speech that the Declaration of Independence and the
Constitution promised that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Another example of how
A Raisin in the Sun demonstrates this is when
Lena buys a house in Clybourne Park, a White neighborhood, considering the fact that her family is Black and isn’t welcome there. Lindner comes to the Younger family’s apartment from the
Clybourne Park Improvement Association to talk to them about their move to the new house in his “all­white neighborhood.” He tries to give them a deal to reconsider the fact that they are moving into his neighborhood. This is an example of inequality. Since the Younger family is
Black, they cannot move into