Brain Snacks: Tasty Tidbits of Knowledge
We know him as Robert Hayden, but he wasn't born with that name. His birth name was Asa Bundy Sheffey. Hayden was the name of his foster parents (William and Sue Hayden). (Source.)
Hayden had some serious vision problems as a young man. They were so bad that he actually transferred from his normal high school to one that specialized in assisting the visually impaired. (Source.)
Although a famous American poet, and an important fixture of twentieth-century English literature, Hayden actually majored in Spanish—true story. (Source.)
Robert Hayden definitely broke down some walls. In 1976 he was the first African American to be named Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (the Poet Laureate). (Source.)