Incident Poem By Countee Cullen

American author (1903–1946)

Countee Cullen
Countee Cullen, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1941
Born	Countee LeRoy Porter (1903-05-30)May 30, 1903
Died	January 9, 1946(1946-01-09) (aged 42)
Occupation	Writer
Nationality	American
Alma mater	New York University; Harvard University
Period	1923–46
Genre	Poetry
Literary movement	Harlem Renaissance
Spouse	Yolande Du Bois, grand. 1928–d. 1930; Ida Mae Roberson, m. 1940

Countee Cullen (born Countee LeRoy Porter; May xxx, 1903 – January ix, 1946) was an American poet, novelist, children's writer, and playwright, particularly well known during the Harlem Renaissance.^[1]

Early life [edit]

Childhood [edit]

Countee LeRoy Porter was born on May 30, 1903, to Elizabeth Thomas Lucas.^[1] ^[2] Due to a lack of records of his early childhood, historians have had difficulty identifying his birthplace. Baltimore, Maryland, New York City, and Louisville, Kentucky have been cited as possibilities.^[1] Although Cullen claimed to exist built-in in New York City, he too frequently referred to Louisville, Kentucky equally his birthplace on legal applications.^[1] Cullen was brought to Harlem at the historic period of 9 by Amanda Porter, believed to be his paternal grandmother, who cared for him until her expiry in 1917.^[1] ^[iii]

Reverend Frederick A. Cullen, pastor of Salem Methodist Episcopal Church, Harlem'due south largest congregation, and his wife, the former Carolyn Belle Mitchell, adopted the 15-twelvemonth-old Countee Porter, although the adoption may not accept been official.^[1] ^[four] Frederick Cullen was a primal effigy in Countee'due south life, and acted as his father. The influential minister would eventually get president of the Harlem affiliate of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).^[4]

DeWitt Clinton Loftier Schoolhouse [edit]

Cullen entered the DeWitt Clinton High School, then located in Hell'south Kitchen.^[5] He excelled academically at the schoolhouse and started writing poesy. He won a citywide poetry contest.^[6] At DeWitt, he was elected into the honor society, was editor of the weekly newspaper, and was elected vice-president of his graduating class.^[5] In January 1922, he graduated with honors in Latin, Greek, Mathematics, and French.^[7]

New York University, Harvard University and early publications [edit]

"Yet Do I Curiosity"

I doubt non God is practiced, well-pregnant, kind,
And did He stoop to quibble could tell why
The trivial cached mole continues blind,
Why flesh that mirrors Him must someday die,
Brand plain the reason tortured Tantalus
Is baited by the fickle fruit, declare
If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus
To struggle upward a never-ending stair.
Inscrutable His ways are, and immune
To catechism by a mind too strewn
With piddling cares to slightly understand
What atrocious encephalon compels His awful hand.
Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:
To make a poet black, and bid him sing!

"Nevertheless Practise I Marvel" (1925) ^[8]

After graduating from high school, he attended New York Academy (NYU).^[9] In 1923, Cullen won second prize in the Witter Bynner National Competitions for Undergraduate Poetry, sponsored past the Verse Society of America, for his poem titled, "The Ballad of the Brown Girl".^[10] Soon after, he was publishing poetry in national periodicals such equally Harper's, Crunch, Opportunity, The Bookman, and Poetry, earning him a national reputation. The ensuing year, he once again placed second in the contest, finally winning showtime prize in 1925. He competed in a poetry contest sponsored by Opportunity and came in second with "To One Who Say Me Nay", losing to Langston Hughes'south "The Weary Blues". Cullen graduated from NYU in 1925 and was one of eleven students selected to Phi Beta Kappa.

That aforementioned year, Cullen entered Harvard to pursue a master's in English language, and published Colour, his first collection of poems that later on became a landmark of the Harlem Renaissance.^[eleven] Written in a careful, traditional fashion, the work celebrated blackness dazzler and deplored the effects of racism. The volume included "Heritage" and "Incident", probably his most famous poems. "Still Do I Marvel", near racial identity and injustice, showed the literary influence of William Wordsworth and William Blake, just its discipline was far from the world of their Romantic sonnets. The poet accepts that there is God, and "God is skillful, well-meaning, kind", but he finds a contradiction in his own plight in a racist society: he is black and a poet.^[12] In 1926, Cullen graduated with a main's degree^[12] while also serving as the guest editor of a special "Negro Poets" issue of the poetry magazine, Palms. The appointment led to Harper'southward inviting him to edit an album of Black poetry in 1927.^[13]

Sexuality [edit]

American author Alain Locke helped Cullen come to terms with his sexuality. Locke wanted to introduce a new generation of African-American writers, such equally Countee Cullen, to the reading public. Locke too sought to present the authentic natures of sexual practice and sexuality through writing, creating a kind of relationship with those who felt the same. Locke introduced Cullen to gay-affirming material, such as the work of Edward Carpenter, at a fourth dimension when well-nigh gays were in the closet. In March 1923, Cullen wrote to Locke nearly Carpenter's piece of work: "It opened up for me soul windows which had been closed; it threw a noble and evident light on what I had begun to believe, because of what the world believes, ignoble and unnatural".^[14]

Critics and historians have non reached consensus as to Cullen's sexuality,^[i] partly because Cullen was unsure of this himself. Cullen's first wedlock, to Yolande Du Bois, experienced difficulties before ending in divorce.^[15] He subsequently had relationships with many different men, although each concluded poorly. Each relationship had a sense of shame or secrecy, such equally his human relationship with Edward Atkinson. Cullen later married Ida Robertson while potentially in a human relationship with Atkinson. Letters between Cullen and Atkinson advise a romantic interest, although there is no concrete show that they were in a sexual relationship.^[xvi]

Relationships [edit]

Cullen married Yolande Du Bois on April nine, 1928. She was the surviving child of Westward. Eastward. B. Du Bois and his kickoff wife Nina Gomer Du Bois, whose son had died as an infant.^[17] The two young people were said to have been introduced by Cullen's close friend Harold Jackman.^[eighteen] They met in the summertime of 1923 when both were in higher: she was at Fisk University and he was at NYU.^[19] Cullen's parents owned a summer home in Pleasantville, New Jersey near the Bailiwick of jersey Shore, and Yolande and her family were likely also vacationing in the area when they offset met.^[19]

While at Fisk, Yolande had had a romantic human relationship with the jazz saxophonist Jimmie Lunceford.^[20] However, her father disapproved of Lunceford. The relationship ended later on Yolande accepted her father'southward preference of a union to Cullen.^[20]

The wedding was the social event of the decade among the African-American elite. Cullen, along with Due west.Eastward.B. Du Bois, planned the details of the nuptials with little assist from Yolande.^[17] Every detail of the hymeneals, including the rail car used for transportation and Cullen receiving the spousal relationship license four days prior to the wedding ceremony day, was considered big news and was reported to the public past the African-American press.^[17] His father, Frederick A. Cullen, officiated at the hymeneals.^[21] The church building was overcrowded, as 3,000 people came to witness the ceremony.^[17]

After the newly wedded couple had a curt honeymoon, Cullen traveled to Paris with his guardian/father, Frederick Cullen, and best homo, Harold Jackman.^[22] Yolande soon joined him there, but they had difficulties from the first.^[21] A few months after their wedding, Cullen wrote a letter to Yolande confessing his love for men.^[23] Yolande told her father and filed for divorce.^[21] Her father wrote separately to Cullen, proverb that he thought Yolande's lack of sexual feel was the reason the marriage did not work out.^[24] The couple divorced in 1930 in Paris.^[21] The details were negotiated betwixt Cullen and Yolande'south father, equally the nuptials details had been.^[17] ^[25]

With the exception of this union before a huge congregation, Cullen was a shy person. He was not flamboyant with any of his relationships.^[23] It was rumored that Cullen had developed a human relationship with Harold Jackman, "the handsomest man in Harlem", which contributed to Cullen and Yolande's divorce.^[23] The young, dashing Jackman was a school instructor and, thanks to his noted dazzler, a prominent effigy among Harlem'due south gay elite. According to Thomas Wirth, writer of Gay Rebel of the Harlem Renaissance, Selections from the Piece of work of Richard Bruce Nugent, at that place is no evidence that the men were lovers, despite newspaper stories and gossip suggesting the opposite.^[23] Scholars take not reached consensus on Cullen'south sexuality. He married Ida Mae Roberson in 1940 and lived, apparently happily, with her until his death.

Jackman's diaries, letters, and outstanding collections of memorabilia are now held in various depositories beyond the state, such every bit the Amistad Research Center at Tulane University in New Orleans and Atlanta University (now Clark Atlanta University) in Atlanta, Georgia. At Cullen'due south decease, Jackman requested that his collection in Georgia be renamed, from the Harold Jackman Collection to the Countee Cullen Memorial Collection, in accolade of his friend. Later Jackman died of cancer in 1961, the collection at Clark Atlanta University was renamed as the Cullen-Jackman Drove to honor them both.^[26] ^[27]

Harlem Renaissance [edit]

The Harlem Renaissance movement was centered in the cosmopolitan community of Harlem, in New York Urban center, which had attracted talented migrants from across the country. During the 1920s, a fresh generation of African-American writers emerged, although a few were Harlem-born. Other leading figures included Alain Locke (The New Negro, 1925), James Weldon Johnson (Black Manhattan, 1930), Claude McKay (Home to Harlem, 1928), Langston Hughes (The Weary Blues, 1926), Zora Neale Hurston (Jonah's Gourd Vine, 1934), Wallace Thurman (Harlem: A Melodrama of Negro Life, 1929), Jean Toomer (Cane, 1923) and Arna Bontemps (Black Thunder, 1935). Writers benefitted by newly bachelor grants and scholarships, and supported by such established white writers as Carl Van Vechten.

The Harlem Renaissance was influenced by a movement called Négritude, which represents "the discovery of black values and the Negro's awareness of his state of affairs".^[28] Cullen saw Negritude as an awakening of a race consciousness and black modernism that flowed into Harlem. Cullen's poetry "Heritage" and "Nighttime Tower" reflect ideas of the Negritude movement. These poems examine African roots and intertwine them with a fresh aspect of African-American life.

Cullen's piece of work intersects with the Harlem community and such prominent figures of the Renaissance every bit Duke Ellington and poet and playwright Langston Hughes. Ellington admired Cullen for confronting a history of oppression and shaping a new voice of "peachy achievement over fearful odds".^[29] Cullen maintained shut friendships with two other prominent writers, Hughes and Alain Locke. Nonetheless, Hughes critiqued Cullen, admitting indirectly, and other Harlem Renaissance writers, for the "desire to run away spiritually from [their] race".^[xxx] Hughes condemned "the desire to pour racial individuality into the mold of American standardization, and to be as little Negro and every bit much American as possible."^[30] Though Hughes critiqued Cullen, he however admired his piece of work and noted the significance of his writing.

Professional career [edit]

What is Africa to me:
Copper sun or scarlet sea,
Jungle star or jungle track,
Stiff bronzed men, or majestic black
Women from whose loins I sprang
When the birds of Eden sang?
One three centuries removed
From the scenes his fathers loved,
Spicy grove, cinnamon tree,
What is Africa to me?

From "Heritage" ^[31]

The social, cultural, and creative explosion known every bit the Harlem Renaissance was the commencement fourth dimension in American history that a large body of literary, art and musical piece of work was contributed by African-American writers and artists. Cullen was at the epicenter of this new-found surge in literature. He considered poetry to be raceless.^[32] However, his verse form "The Blackness Christ" took on a racial theme, exploring a blackness youth convicted of a crime he did not commit. "But shortly later on in the early 1930s, his work was well-nigh completely [free] of racial subject matter. His poetry instead focused on idyllic beauty and other archetype romantic subjects."^[32]

Cullen worked as banana editor for Opportunity magazine, where his column, "The Dark Tower", increased his literary reputation. Cullen'due south poetry collections The Ballad of the Brown Girl (1927) and Copper Sunday (1927) explored like themes as Color, but they were not and then well received. Cullen's Guggenheim Fellowship of 1928 enabled him to study and write abroad.

Betwixt the years 1928 and 1934, Cullen traveled back and forth betwixt France and the United States. By 1929 Cullen had published iv volumes of verse. The championship poem of The Black Christ and Other Poems (1929) was criticized for the use of Christian religious imagery; Cullen compared the lynching of a black human to the crucifixion of Jesus.

The grave of Countee Cullen in Woodlawn Cemetery. (The stone is shared with Robert L. Cooper, the 2nd husband (1953–1966) of Cullen'southward married woman Ida.^[33])

Too as writing books, Cullen promoted the piece of work of other black writers. Just by 1930 his reputation as a poet waned. In 1932 his only novel was published, I Way to Sky, a social comedy of lower-form blacks and the bourgeoisie in New York Metropolis.

From 1934 until the end of his life, he taught English language, French, and artistic writing at Frederick Douglass Junior High School in New York City. During this catamenia, he also wrote two works for young readers: The Lost Zoo (1940), poems about the animals who were killed in the Inundation, and My Lives and How I Lost Them, an autobiography of his cat. Along with Herman West. Porter, Cullen as well provided guidance to a young James Baldwin during his time at the school.

In the final years of his life, Cullen wrote mostly for the theatre. He worked with Arna Bontemps to adapt Bontemps's 1931 novel God Sends Lord's day as the musical St. Louis Adult female (1946, published in 1971). Its score was equanimous past Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer, both white. The Broadway musical, set in a poor black neighborhood of St. Louis, Missouri, was criticized past black intellectuals for creating a negative prototype of black Americans. In some other stretch, Cullen translated the Greek tragedy Medea by Euripides, which was published in 1935 every bit The Medea and Some Poems, with a collection of sonnets and short lyrics.^[34]

Several years later, Cullen died from loftier blood force per unit area and uremic poisoning on January ix, 1946, aged 42.^[34] He is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York City.^[35]

Honors [edit]

The Countee Cullen Library, a Harlem co-operative location of the New York Public Library, was named in his honor. In 2013, he was inducted into the New York Writers Hall of Fame.

Literary influences [edit]

Due to Cullen'southward mixed identity, he developed an aesthetic that embraced both black and white cultures.^[4] He was a firm believer that poetry surpassed race and that it could exist used to bring the races closer together.^[three] Although race was a recurring theme in his works, Cullen wanted to be known as a poet non strictly defined by race.

Cullen developed his Eurocentric style of writing from his exposure to Graeco-Roman Classics and English Literature, work he was exposed to while attending prestigious universities like New York University and Harvard.^[36] In his collection of poems To the Iii for Whom the Book Cullen uses Greek methodology to explore race and identity and writes well-nigh Medusa, Theseus, Phasiphae, and the Minotaur.^[36] Although continuing to develop themes of race and identity in his work, Cullen found artistic inspiration in ancient Greek and Roman literature.

Cullen was too influenced by the Romantics and studied subjects of love, romance, and religion.^[36] John Keats and Edna St. Vincent Millay both influenced Cullen's style of writing.^[36] In Caroling Dusk, an anthology edited by Cullen, he expands on his belief of using a Eurocentric mode of writing. He writes: "Equally heretical as it may audio, there is the probability that Negro poets, dependent as they are on the English language, may have more to gain from the rich groundwork of English and American poetry than from the nebulous atavistic yearnings towards an African inheritance."^[36] Cullen believed that African-American poets should work inside the English conventions of poetry to bear witness to white Americans that African Americans could participate in these archetype traditions.^[4] He believed using a more traditional style of writing poetry would allow African Americans to build bridges between the black and white communities.^[iii]

Major works [edit]

Color [edit]

Color is Countee Cullen's first published book and color is "in every sense its prevailing characteristic."^[21] Cullen discusses heavy topics regarding race and the distance of i'south heritage from their motherland and how information technology is lost. It has been said that his poems fall into a variety of categories: those that with no mention were made of color. Secondly, the poems that circled around the consciousness of African Americans and how beingness a "Negro in a day like this" in America is very cruel.^[21] Through Cullen's writing, readers tin view his own subjectivity of his inner workings and how he viewed the Negro soul and mind. He discusses the psychology of African Americans in his writings and gives an extra dimension that forces the reader to see a harsh reality of Americas past time. "Heritage" is one of Countee Cullen'south best-known poems published in this book. Although it is published in Color, it originally appeared in The Survey, March 1, 1925. Count Cullen wrote "Heritage" during a time when African-American artists were dreaming of Africa.^[37] During the Harlem Renaissance, Cullen, Hughes, and other poets were using their creative energy trying fuse Africa into the narrative of their African-American lives. In "Heritage", Cullen grapples with the separation of his African culture and history created by the institution of slavery.^[37] To Cullen, Africa was not a place of which he had personal noesis. Information technology was a place that he knew through someone else's description, passed down through generations.^[38] Africa was a place of heritage. Throughout the poem, he struggles with the cost of the cultural conversion and religious conversion of his ancestors when they were away "torn from Africa".^[38]

The Black Christ [edit]

The Black Christ was a drove of poems published at the top of Cullen's career in 1929. The poems examine the relationship of faith and justice among African Americans. In some of the poems, Cullen equates the suffering of Christ in his crucifixion and the suffering of African Americans.^[39] This collection poems captures Cullen's idealistic artful of race pride and religious skepticism.^[forty] The Black Christ also takes a close look at the racial violence in America during the 1920s.^[39] By the time Cullen published this book of poetry, the concept of the Blackness Messiah was prevalent in other African-American writers such as Langston Hughes, Claude Mackay, and Jean Toomer.^[40]

Copper Sun [edit]

Copper Sun is a collection of poetry published in New York in 1927. The collection examines the sense of love, particularly a dear or unity betwixt white and black people. In some poems, love is ominous and leads to decease. Notwithstanding, in full general, the love extends not only to people but to natural elements such as plants, trees, etc. Many of the poems also link the concept of dearest to a Christian background. Still, Cullen was as well attracted to something both pagan likewise every bit Christian. in ane of his poems "One Twenty-four hours We Played a Game", the theme of love appears. The speaker calls: "'Kickoff love! Beginning love!' I urged". (The poem portrays dearest as necessary to go on in life and that it is basic to life as the corner stone or the fundamental of edifice home.) Similarly, in "Love'south Fashion", Cullen'south poem portrays a love that shares and unifies the world. The poem suggests that "love is not enervating, all, itself/ Withholding aught; dearest's is nobler way/ of courtesy" . In the poem, the speaker contends that "Honey rehabilitates unto the end." Love fixes itself, regrows, and heals.^[41]

The Medea and Some Poems [edit]

Verse collections [edit]

Color, Harper & Brothers, 1925; Ayer, 1993, ISBN 978-0-88143-155-1 (includes the poems "Incident", "Most White", "Heritage", and others), illustrations by Charles Cullen
Copper Sun, Harper & Brothers, 1927
Harlem Vino (1926)
The Ballad of the Chocolate-brown Girl, Harper & Brothers, 1927, illustrations by Charles Cullen
The Blackness Christ and Other Poems, Harper & Brothers, 1929, illustrations by Charles Cullen
Tableau (1925)
One Mode to Sky, Harper & Brothers, 1932
Any Human to Another (1934)
The Medea and Some other Poems (1935)
On These I Stand: An Anthology of the Best Poems of Countee Cullen, Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1947
Gerald Lyn Early (ed.), My Soul's High Song: The Nerveless Writings of Countee Cullen, Doubleday, 1991, ISBN 9780385417587
Countee Cullen: Collected Poems, Library of America, 2013, ISBN 978-one-59853-083-4

Prose [edit]

One Way to Sky (1931)
The Lost Zoo, Harper & Brothers, 1940; Modern Curriculum Press, 1991, ISBN 9780813672175
My Lives and How I Lost Them, Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1942

Drama [edit]

St. Louis Woman (1946)

Equally editor [edit]

Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse past Black Poets of the Twenties: Anthology of Blackness Verse. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1927.

See too [edit]

African-American literature
Harlem Renaissance

References [edit]

^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^east ^f ^g Early, Gerald. "Most Countee Cullen's Life and Career". MAPS: Mod American Poesy Site . Retrieved September 30, 2022.
^ "Countee Cullen". poets.org. February 4, 2014. Retrieved May 16, 2017.
^ ^a ^b ^c Williams, Jasmin K (Apr 11, 2012). "Countee Cullen: A renaissance poet". The New York Amsterdam News.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d "Countee Cullen". Poesy Foundation . Retrieved May sixteen, 2017.
^ ^a ^b Perry: 4; cf. Shucard: x.
^ Shucard: 10; cf. Perry: four.
^ Perry: 5.
^ Cullen, "Yet Do I Marvel", Verse Foundation.
^ Perry: 5 cf. Shucard: seven.
^ Perry: 6.
^ Perry: 7.
^ ^a ^b Shucard: 7.
^ Potter, Vilma (1994). "Idella Purnell's PALMS and Godfather Witter Bynner". American Periodicals. 4: 55–56. JSTOR 20771064. Retrieved March thirty, 2022.
^ Beemyn, Genny (2015). A Queer Uppercase: A History of Gay Life in Washington. New York: Taylor & Francis. pp. 57–58. ISBN978-1317819387.
^ Norton, Rictor (1998). "Soul Windows | The Gay Love Letters of Countee Cullen. Excerpts from Gay Love Letters through the Centuries". Gay History and Literature . Retrieved May 28, 2019.
^ Schwarz, A. B. Christa (2003). Gay Voices of the Harlem Renaissance. Indiana University Press. ISBN9780253216076.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^eastward Wintz, Cary D.; Finkelman, Paul (2004). Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance: A–J. Taylor & Francis. ISBN9781579584573.
^ Wintz, Cary (2004). Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance. New York: Taylor & Francis Books. p. 273. ISBN978-1579584573.
^ ^a ^b Summers, Martin (2004). Manliness and Its Discontents: The Black Eye Grade and the Transformation of Masculinity. The University of Due north Carolina Printing. p. 188.
^ ^a ^b Ogbar, Jeffrey (2010). The Harlem Renaissance Revisited: Politics, Arts, and Letters. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 49.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^{due east} ^f Du Bois, W.E.B. (1926). "Our Book Shelf" The Crunch. New York, NY: NAACP. p. 238.
^ English, Daylanne (2004). Unnatural Selections: Eugenics in American Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance. Chapel Hill and London: The Academy of North Carolina Printing. p. 57.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Molesworth, Charles (2012). "Countee Cullen's Reputation". Transition. No. 107 (107): 68–69. doi:ten.2979/transition.107.67. JSTOR x.2979/transition.107.67.
^ English, Daylanne (2004). Unnatural Selections: Eugenics in American Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance. Chapel Hill and London: The Academy of North Carolina Press. p. 58.
^ Ogbar, Jeffrey O. Thou. (May 28, 2010). The Harlem Renaissance Revisited: Politics, Arts, and Letters. JHU Printing. ISBN9780801894619.
^ CULLEN, COUNTEE (1925). Color by COUNTEE CULLEN. United States: Harper & Brothers.
^ "Drove: Countee Cullen-Harold Jackman memorial collection | Archives Research Eye". findingaids.auctr.edu. Robert W. Woodruff Library, Atlanta Academy Center. hdl:twenty.500.12322/fa:034. Retrieved April 24, 2021.
^ Rabaka, Reiland (2015). The Negritude Motion. Lexington Books. p. 31.
^ Molesworth, Charles (2012). And Bid Him Sing: A Biography of Countee Cullen. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. p. 2.
^ ^a ^b Jackson, Major (2013). Countee Cullen Nerveless Poems. The Library of America.
^ Cullen, "Heritage" Archived December 21, 2013, at the Wayback Automobile, Poesy Foundation.
^ ^a ^b Jaynes, Gerald (2005). "Cullen, Countee" Encyclopedia of African American Order. Thou Oaks, California 91320: SAGE. p. 241. ISBN978-0-7619-2764-8. {{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
^ "Ida Cullen Cooper, 86, Widow Of Harlem Renaissance Poet". The New York Times. May 6, 1986. p. B8. Retrieved March 16, 2020.
^ ^a ^b Bader, Philip (2004). African-American Writers. Infobase Publishing. p. 57. ISBN9781438107837.
^ Wilson, Scott. Resting Places: The Burying Sites of More than Than xiv,000 Famous Persons, 3d ed.: ii (Kindle Location 10591). McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. Kindle Edition
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^eastward Cueva, Edmond Paul (July 2013). "The Classics and Countee Cullen". Interdisciplinary Humanities. 30 Upshot: 24–36.
^ ^a ^b PHILLIPS, CARYL (Winter 2015). "What Is Africa to Me At present?". Enquiry in African Literatures. 46 (4): 10–12. doi:x.2979/reseafrilite.46.4.x. S2CID 162558115.
^ ^a ^b Holloway, Jonathan. "African American History: From Emancipation to the Present". Open Yale courses. Archived from the original on Apr 8, 2017. Retrieved May 25, 2017.
^ ^a ^b Hansen, Kelli (February 19, 2014). "The Black Christ by Countee Cullen with illustrations past Charles Cullen". Libraries University of Michigan . Retrieved May xviii, 2017.
^ ^a ^b Sundquist, Eric J (1993). To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making of American Literature. Harvard University Printing. p. 594.
^ Cullen, Countee (1991). My Soul's Loftier Song. New York: Doubleday. p. 137.

External links [edit]