Langston Hughes (1902–1967) was born in Joplin, Missouri, and became a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance. His debut collection, The Weary Blues (Alfred A. Knopf, 1926), was followed by work across poetry, fiction, and drama. He wrote the sequence Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951), which contains his poem "Harlem," and the short fiction featuring the character Jesse B. Semple. He studied briefly at Columbia University and graduated from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. The NAACP awarded him the Spingarn Medal in 1960.
