Countee Cullen, American Poet

Countee Cullen, American Poet

Countee Cullen (May 30, 1903 - January 9, 1946) was an American poet and leading figure in the Harlem Renaissance. He was brought up by a woman named Mrs. Porter, who may have been his paternal grandmother, who brought him 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, 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. By 1929 he had published four volumes of poetry. 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 NYC. He died from high blood pressure and uremic poisoning in 1946, at the age of 42. Cullen photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1941.

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