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Raymond Patterson was an African American poet, writer, and professor from Harlem, New York. Patterson received his BA from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania and his Masters degree in English from New York University He has since become a prolific poet, whose work is highly anthologized. He is the author of 26 Ways of Looking at a Black Man and Other Poems as well as Elemental Blues, a book-length poem on the life of the enslaved African poet Phyllis Wheatley. His work often explored the roles of African Americans in the arts and society With his wife, Patterson created Black Poets Reading, a nonprofit speakers’ bureau. In 1968 he joined the faculty of New York City College, where he founded the Langston Hughes Festival, which he directed from 1973 to 1993. Patterson died in 2001 at the age of 71.

Born Theodore Roosevelt Augustus Major Poston, Ted Poston grew up working on his father’s small newspaper in Hopkinsville, Kentucky After college he decided to make journalism his career. He went to New York City, where he landed a job as city hall reporter for the New York Post. Later, Poston won many journalistic awards for his work covering race relations and the civil rights movement. He also published about twenty short stories, including "The Revolt of the Evil Fairies," one of many stories based on his life at Booker T. Washington Colored Grammar School in Hopkinsville.