Black Homeownership in A Raisin in the Sun and AmericaIn the famous 1959 "kitchen debate" with Russian Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev, Richard Nixon stated the American dream of owning a home was available to all Americans regardless of class, race or any other social bond. For Nixon, this statement was proof of American dominance over Russia, of the superiority of democracy over communism. Nixon, however, greatly exaggerates the availability of homeownership; owning a home in the suburbs was not an option for all Americans, especially African Americans. Government subsidies, so important to making housing affordable, were not extended to blacks. Additionally, suburban communities across the country sought to keep their neighborhoods segregated by prohibiting blacks from purchasing homes through “restrictive covenants.” William Levitt, whose Levittown communities symbolized postwar prosperity and the American Dream, did not sell homes to blacks until the government ordered him to integrate in the late 1950s. And black families who eventually managed to obtain homes in the suburbs risked continued threats and violence from their white neighbors who feared, among other things, that their property values ​​would decline and their communities would decay. In her 1958 play A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry addressed these issues before they fully exploded into the American consciousness. His work reveals the fears and restrictions that prevented many blacks from achieving the American dream of the 1950s. The overarching theme in A Raisin in the Sun is the quest for homeownership. The play is about a black family living on the south side of Chicago, a poverty-stricken African America... center of paper......58.Jackson, Kenneth. The crab frontier: the suburbanization of the United States. New York. Oxford University Press, 1985.Lemann, Nicholas. The Promised Land. New York. Vintage Books, 1991.Marling, Karal Ann. As seen on TV. Cambridge. Harvard University Press, 1994. May, Elaine Tyler. Headed home. New York. Basic Books, 1988. Patterson, James T. Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974. New York. Oxford University Press, 1996. Riesman, David. The lonely crowd. New port. Yale University Press, 1961.Rose, Jerry D. The Lonely Crowd: A Critical Commentary. New York. America RD Corporation, 1965. Rosenberg, Rosalind. Divided Lives: American Women in the Twentieth Century. New York. Hill and Wang, 1992.Segrue, Thomas J. The Origins of the Urban Crisis. Princeton, New Jersey. Princeton University Press, 1996.