Countée Cullen, Poet Laureate of the Harlem Renaissance (1903–1946)
thegavoice.comOh, Countée Cullen — Harlem boy meteor whose star climbed to the highest, brightest apogee, and then gradually faded. In 1925, Alain Locke – the first Black Rhodes scholar and a mentor to young African-American men — produced the seminal anthology, “The New Negro: An Interpretation.” In it, he wrote, “[There’s] ample evidence of a New Negro in the latest phases of social change and progress, but still more in the internal world of the Negro mind and spirit … the New Negro must be seen in the perspective of a New World, and especially of a New America … a jump of two generations in social economy and of a century and more in civilization.” True, the 21st century may view Locke’s aspirational (and male) figure as rooted in a specific vision of class, education, and urbanization, but the break with the past is clear, and with it comes a massive flowering of the new: new poetry, drama, visual arts, journalism, style … Countée was raised among it all.
Abandoned by his parents during childhood, Countée eventually made his way into the Harlem home of prominent Reverend Frederick Cullen, pastor of the Salem Methodist Episcopal Church and an icon for competing legs in Harlem life: conservative Christian patriarchal religion and racial uplift dogfight political life.
The boy took the Reverend’s name and both his religious and political outlooks. Countée caught the eye of W.E.B. Du Bois, who’d practically prophesized his coming.
Yes, the Du Bois, visionary author of “The Souls of Black Folk,” head of the nascent NAACP, editor, educator, and expounder upon the extravagant flow of all things African American in this new epoch.
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