Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right?

It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream.

Listen to Evil Genius on BBC Sounds.

Hello. Castro came to power in Cuba.

The film Ben-Hur was released. Nixon and Khrushchev debated the rights of communism and capitalism, and Matt Charles Parker was lynched by a mob in Mississippi before he could stand trial for raping a white woman. These are just a few of the events of 1959. The year that Lorraine Hansbury's The Raisin in the Sun became the first play staged on Broadway by an African-American woman,

and its author became the youngest playwright at 29 to be awarded the New York's Critics Prize.

Lorraine Hansbury was cursed to live in interesting times.

We live in a nation where everything which is talked about is talked about in terms of the fact

that we are going to be the mightiest, the toughest, the roughest cats going, you know, in the

whole world.

And... the toughest, the roughest cat's going, you know, in the whole world. And when a Negro says something about, I'm tired, I can't stand it no more, I want to hit somebody.

You say that we're sitting here panting and ranting for violence, you know.

It's not right.

Lorraine Hansbury, and ranting for violence, you know. It's not right.

Lorraine Hansbury, addressing a civil rights rally in 63.

Now, she died appallingly young in her 30s,

but her voice can still be heard loud and clear.

Later this month, Raisin in the Sun opens in Sheffield, and it'll be broadcast here on Radio 3. And in March, her third fully-fledged play Le Blanc will open the National in a production

directed by Yale Farber. What did Lorraine Hansbury mean in the 50s and 60s? What does she mean

now? Well, I'm joined from Baltimore by the playwright Kwame

Kueyama, who wrote Beneath's Place in response to Hansbury, from Sheffield by Don Walton,

who's preparing a production of Raisin in the Sun that will tour the country. And here in the studio,

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