Countee Cullen

Countee Cullen

Countee Cullen was one of the most notable poets of the Harlem Renaissance, yet very little is known about his life. This is primarily due to conflicting stories and the fact that he himself led a very private and secret life. What is known for certain is that he was born on May 30, 1903 as Countee LeRoy Porter. There are conflicting debates as to where he was born, but the most widely accepted place is Louisville, Kentucky. From birth Cullen had an unstable life. Both his parents abandoned him when he was a small child. He was reared by his grandmother until her death in 1917. After the death of his grandmother, he lived with Reverend Frederick Asbury Cullen and his wife in New York City. Rev. Cullen was the minister of the Salem Methodist Episcopal Church. Though not officially adopted, Cullen thought of the reverend and wife as his parents. Cullen was so greatly influenced by his new family that he soon changed his name to Countee Cullen, and thus a star was born.

Cullen began writing poetry at a young age. Cullen was educated at the prestigious DeWitt Clinton High School (1922), graduated Phi Beta Kappa from New York University (1925), and completed an M.A. in literature from Harvard (1926). At school Cullen was an extremely active and involved student, writing several poems that were highly acclaimed and earned numerous poetry prizes. In 1925, Cullen produced his first book of poetry entitled Color, written in a careful, traditional style; the work celebrated black beauty and deplored the effects of racism. Cullen's Color was a landmark of the Harlem Renaissance. The book included "Heritage" and "Incident" probably his most famous poems. Cullen published several volumes of popular poetry, wrote two works for young readers, and in the last years of his life he wrote mostly for theatre.

Cullen met and married Yolanda Du Bois, the daughter of W.E.B Du Bois in 1928, but this union was brief and they divorced in 1930. He married his second wife, Ida Mae Roberson in 1940. Cullen spent his last years teaching English and French at Frederick Douglas Junior High School. He continued to write and actually wrote the script for the play, St. Louis Woman, which was based on a God Sends Sunday, a novel by Arna Bontemps. The