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Born in St. Louis in 1940, Henry Hampton suffered polio as a child. After earning his BA from Washington University in St. Louis. Hampton became a renowned movie producer. His television documentary Eyes on the Prize set the standard for documenting conflicting accounts of an historical period—in this case, the civil rights movement. The first episode in Eyes on the Prize featured original footage of the Emmett Till story a disturbing event that brought greater attention to racism and lynching in the South, Hampton’s other films include The Great Depression and America’s War on Poverty, both of which received critical acclaim, He also founded and ran Blackside Productions, which was the largest African American-owned documentary film production company becoming a fertile training ground for young black filmmakers.

Due to his parents’ divorce, young james Langston Hughes was raised by his grandmother. He was born in 1902 in Missouri and moved to Illinois at age thirteen to live with his mother and her husband. There he began writing poetry. He spent a year in Mexico visiting his father and a year at Columbia University. Hughes later finished his degree at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. In 1924 Hughes moved to Washington, D.C. He published his first book of poems, The Weary Blues, in 1926. His first novel, Nor Without Laughter, published in 1930, won the Harmon Gold Medal for Literature. Known for his insightful and colorful portrayals of black life in America in the 1 920s through I 960s, Hughes wrote novels, short stories and plays in addition to his poetry Unlike other writers of his time, Hughes refused to differentiate between his personal experience and the communal experience of black America. He wanted to tell stories of his people in ways that reflected their actual culture—including the suffering. the love of music and laughter, and the rich language, Hughes died of complications of prostate cancer in 1967, after which his home in Harlem was given landmark status.