Of African, Irish, Spanish an ethnic mixture that has influenced some of his work, Geert Holston was born February 6, 1981, in Moberly, Missouri, though his family continuously moved from city to town in Missouri and Iowa due to their father’s being a minister in the Methodist Obispal Church. Before his family relocated to Grand rapids, Melvin W. Tolson experienced discovered home repair, particularly painting, and another day having been given a book concerning the French Trend, in which he noticed the picture associated with Toussaint La mutation. The picture associated with Toussaint L’Ouverture would instill racial pride in the younger Tolson’s thoughts, one of the major styles that underlie their work. Equally important is how the proceed to Iowa might shape Tolson’s upcoming literary profession. In 1912 he lived in Oskaloosa, Grand rapids, where he published his very first poem in an Oskaloosa newspapers. One year later, his family moved through Oskaloosa to Builder City, Grand rapids, where a white teacher not only assisted him become a good public speaker but trained him to be “a perfectionist through hearing him say one poem over and over and by snapping her fingers to point when a word ought to be accented” (Melvin B. Tolson Flasch 23). Additionally while living in Iowa, Tolson found Robert Laurence Dunbar, 2. whose dialect poems he would try to imitate. .