Quintessentially an activist poet, Ebon is probably still thought of by many as a 1960s poet, with everything identification with that decade implies. One of the Chicago poets who flourished in connection with the OBAC Writers Workshop in the late 1960s and early 1970s, he is best known for his efforts of that period.

Ebon was born Leo Thomas Hale, the oldest child of Leo and Beatrice Hale of the small farming community of Milan, Tennessee. Son of a school-teacher and the grandchild of middle-class farmers, he went to Nashville's Fisk University on an early entrant scholarship. In college he was nicknamed after the character in a popular song: "Hang down your head, Tom Dooley." The name Tom Dooley stuck until around 1963, when he chose the name Ebon (pronounced E-bn) after a pioneering black South American aviator. Ebon's activism might be said to have begun with his work...