When Benny Russell was told that that the world was not 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") According to the Star Trek Encyclopedia (4th ed., vol. 1, p. 350) , the birth and death years of Langston Hughes were 1902 and 1967, respectively. The authors of this reference work described Hughes as one of the "foremost interpreters of the experience of African-Americans as a minority in the American nation."