Beginning in the 1930s, when he researched Black history for the Federal Writers’ Project in his native Detroit, Hayden studied the story of Black people from their roots in Africa to their present condition in the United States. The historical basis for much of Hayden’s poetry stemmed from his extensive study of American and African American history. “Robert Hayden is now generally accepted,” Frederick Glaysher stated in Hayden’s Collected Prose, “as the most outstanding craftsman of Afro-American poetry.” Hayden’s formal, elegant poems about the Black history and experience earned him a number of other major awards as well. His collections of poetry include Heart-Shape in the Dust (1940), Figure of Time (1955), A Ballad of Remembrance (1962), which won the grand prize at the First World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar, Senegal, Selected Poems (1966), Words in the Mourning Time (1970), The Night-Blooming Cereus (1972), Angle of Ascent: New and Selected Poems (1975), and American Journal (1978). Hayden eventually became the first African American to be appointed as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress.
As a teaching fellow, he was the first Black faculty member in Michigan’s English department.
After graduating from high school in 1932, he attended Detroit City College (now Wayne State University) on scholarship and later earned a graduate degree in English literature from the University of Michigan. Due to extreme nearsightedness, Hayden turned to books rather than sports in his childhood.
Poet Robert Hayden was born Asa Bundy Sheffey into a poor family in the Paradise Valley neighborhood of Detroit he had an emotionally traumatic childhood and was raised in part by foster parents.
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