Poet, novelist and playwright Langston Hughes (1901-1967) grew up in the Midwest and moved to New York City to attend Columbia University. Hughes is known as a leading figure in the Harlem Renaissance, a cultural mecca for Black intellectuals and artists in the early 20th century. He wrote about African American life between the 1920s and 1960s, including "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," "Montage of A Dream Deferred," and "Not Without Laughter," which won the Harmon Gold Medal for Literature. His ashes are interred beneath a mosaic in the NYPL's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, in Harlem.