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Robert Hayden was born in Detroit, Michigan on August 4, 1913, to Asa Sheffey and Ruth Finn. His father, Asa, was a coal miner and his mother, Ruth, was of racially mixed heritage. Before Hayden was born, his parents' marriage dissolved, and the boy was handed over to WIlliam and Sue Hayden. Hayden kept contact with his natural mother, spending vacations away from Detroit in his mother's home in Buffalo, New York.
Hayden's relationship with his adoptive parents was tense as William Hayden was a very strictly religious Baptist, while Sue was somewhat less than a doting mother. The relationship between his adoptive parents was contentious, and young Hayden was often caught in the middle of emotional struggles between his adopted parents and his natural mother. In fact, he was never really formally adopted, and his legal name remained Asa Bundey Sheffey. In his teenage years, Hayden suffered from extreme myopia, limiting his athletic prowess and steering him toward literary talents. He wrote poems as early as age 16 while working all sorts of jobs as a typist, a grocery store clerk, and a bookie. He won a scholarship to Detroit City College in 1932 but left in 1936 before earning a degree.
There are three chapters to Hayden's literary career. He began writing poems in the 1930s and 40s working for the Works Progress Administration, which was a government sponsored program for artists. His early work centered primarily on the experiences of everyday blacks and their family relationships.
The second chapter of his literary career during the 1960s saw Hayden ostracized by his more militant black peers who dismissed Hayden's focus on the more general human condition than on race and society. Hayden is quoted as saying, "There is no such thing as black literature. There is good literature and bad. And that's all." While his work gained increasing notoriety, his status among black writers waned as the majority of radical writers of the time saw themselves as black first and artists second. At the first black writers' conference in April, 1966, Hayden was denounced and marginalized. In 1969, Hayden found a home as a professor of English at the University of Michigan where he taught until his death.
The 1970s brought Hayden more widespread acclaim. He published major collections of poetry in 1970 and 1975, and during that decade, he held a consulting position to the library of Congress, the position today known as poet laureate. In a White House ceremony in 1980, Hayden was one of the American artists honored by President Jimmy Carter.