James Langston Hughes was one of the most remarkable people in the world of Harlem, and one of the most influential people during the 1920's. He is an American poet as well as an author of all fields of literature such as drama, children's literature, and journalism. He was born in Missouri in the tiny town of Joplin. His parents, James Nathaniel and Carrie Mercer, were divorced shortly after his birth on February 1, 1902. Hughes' father …showed first 75 words of 752 total…

…showed last 75 words of 752 total…the sun...Or does it explode?" He was describing what he knew, the Harlem of the 1930s and '40s, but the conditions he wrote about were not limited to Harlem. When Lorraine Hansberry wrote her play about a black family trying to escape their lot in 1950s Southside Chicago, where she was born and raised, she saw the same forces at work and named her play A Raisin in the Sun after Hughes' poem.