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was born in Joplin, Missouri, in 1902. His parents were divorced when he was a small child and his father moved to Mexico. He was raised by his grandmother until he was twelve, when he moved to Lincoln, Illinois, to live with his mother and her husband. It was du ....

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.... it had on his writing, as in "Montage of a Dream Deferred." His life and work were enormously important in shaping the artistic contributions of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. , for most of his adult life the unofficial Poet Laureate of the race, accepted as his vocation "to explain and illuminate the Negro condition in America." His personal credo, "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain," became the credo of a generation of Aframerican poets. Hughes' poetry drew from traditional sources and individual voices; his experiments in form reflect an attempt to capture the myriad colors known collectively as "black." His opus speaks not for Hughes ....