Best known as a writer of poetry, novels, short stories, and plays and a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, Langston Hughes was born James Mercer Langston Hughes on February 1, 1901 in Joplin, Missouri. His first book of poetry, , was published in 1926 and in 1930 his first novel won the Harmon gold medal for literature. His poem "The Negro Mother" was first published in 1931 in his poetry collection . Hughes passed away on May 22, 1967 at the age of 65. His ashes are interred beneath a cosmogram floor medallion inspired by and bearing lines from Hughes' poem "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" in the foyer of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, New York.

Charles W. White was born in Chicago, Illinois on April 2, 1918. A prominent figure in the Chicago Black Renaissance, White began his career as a painter, printmaker, and educator in California in 1956 and in 1965 began teaching at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, a position he would continue throughout his life. White graduated from the School of the Art Institute in Chicago in 1938 and worked as a muralist for the Works Progress Administration's Illinois Federal Arts Projects from 1939-1940. In 1942 and 1943 he received two Julius Rosenwald Foundation fellowships to create "The Contribution of the Negro to American Democracy" mural at the Hampton Institute (now Hampton University) in Hampton, Virginia and was artist-in-residence at Washington, D.C.'s Howard University in 1945. As an artist, White primarily created black/sepia and white drawings, paintings, and lithographs depicting figurative portrayals of African American history and experiences. His work has been exhibited throughout the country and in 1972 he was the third African American artist elected to full membership in the National Academy of Design. He passed away on October 3, 1979 at the age of 61 and is buried in Mountain View Cemetery in Altadena, California.