Born in 1908 into a middle-class black family in the predominantly white town of Old Saybrook, Conn., Petry studied to be a pharmacist before marrying and moving to New York, where she threw ...

Yet in 1937, a generation earlier, Hansberry's fellow Chicagoan Theodore Ward married the American family play with black identity politics in the barely seen "Big White Fog." U.K. auds may be ...