Langston Hughes was an influential African-American American author and poet among other things in the 20th century. One of his works was Selected Poems of Langston Hughes.
When Benny Russell was told that that the world wasn't ready to hear that one of the Incredible Tales writers was a Negro, he mentioned Hughes, along with Richard Wright and Zora Neal Hurston, as examples of such writers. (DS9: "Far Beyond the Stars")