Plot Synopsis

Based on the play by Lorraine Hansberry. In 1953 Chicago the African-American Younger family anxiously await the arrival of a $10,000 life insurance check made out to Lena the family matriarch, from the estate of her late husband. She dreams of retiring from her job as a maid and escaping her tenement apartment to, at long last, own a house. Her son, who works as a chauffeur, longs to prove his manhood by owning his own business and is obsessed with investing in a liquor store. Lena purchases a house with the insurance money, surprisingly, in an all-white residential neighborhood and gives some of the money to her son to invest, which he soon loses to a scam artist. When the community discovers that they are about to have a black family move in, they conspire to try and buy out the them out to prevent intergration. Refusing to be intimated the Younger family are determined not to delay their dreams any longer.