Langston Hughes (1902–1967) was born in Joplin, Missouri, and spent most of his childhood in Lawrence, Kansas, with his maternal grandmother. Hughes was thirteen when she died, at which time he went to live with his mother. He graduated from high school in Cleveland, Ohio, and then spent more than a year with his father in Mexico. It was there that he wrote the poem, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," which would later gain him recognition as a writer. Hughes studied for a year at Columbia University, leaving in 1920. For the next several years he traveled, taking whatever jobs he could find. He continued to write, and his work began to appear in important African-American periodicals like Opportunity and The Crisis. He accepted a scholarship from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania and graduated in 1929. While there, he wrote his first novel, Not Without Laughter.

Hughes wrote a lot of material crossing all genres. He gained particular fame for his famous fictional character Jesse B. Semple, or "Simple," the main character in Hughes's long-running newspaper column. His works include The Weary Blues, The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain, The Ways of White Folks, Shakespeare in Harlem, Simple Speaks His Mind, and Simple Stakes a Claim.