Cullen photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1941. Countee Cullen (May 30, 1903 - January 9, 1946) was an American poet who was a leading figure in the Harlem Renaissance. He was either born in New York, Maryland, or Lexington, Kentucky. He was brought up by
Cullen photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1941. Countee Cullen (May 30, 1903 - January 9, 1946) was an American poet who was a leading figure in the Harlem Renaissance. He was either born in New York, Maryland, or Lexington, Kentucky. He was brought up by a woman named Mrs. Porter, who may have been his paternal grandmother. She brought young Countee to Harlem when he was nine. No known reliable information exists of his childhood until 1918 when he was taken in, or adopted, by Reverend Cullen the local minister, and founder, of the Salem Methodist Episcopal Church. He attended the DeWitt Clinton High School in The Bronx, and graduated with honors in Latin, Greek, Mathematics, and French. In 1925 he graduated from NYU as one of eleven students selected to Phi Beta Kappa. Cullen entered Harvard, to pursue a masters in English, about the same time his first collection of poems, Color, was published, a landmark of the Harlem Renaissance. He graduated with a masters degree in 1926. He was very secretive about his life. His real mother did not contact him until he became famous in the 1920s. By 1929 Cullen had published four volumes of poetry. The title poem of The Black Christ and Other Poems (1929) was criticized for the use of Christian religious imagery, he compared the lynching of a black man to the crucifixion of Jesus. He promoted the work of other black writers, but by 1930 his reputation as a poet waned. From 1934 until the end of his life, he taught English, French, and creative writing at Frederick Douglass Junior High School in New York City. He died from high blood pressure and uremic poisoning in 1946, at the age of 42.
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