Countee Cullen was possibly born on May 30, although because of different accounts of the actual date in his early life, a general application of the year of his birth as 1903 is reasonable. He was either born in New York, Baltimore, or Lexington, Kentucky. Although his late wife was convinced that he was born in Lexington. Cullen was possibly abandoned by his mother, and raised by a woman named Mrs. Porter. Mrs. Porter was thought to be his paternal grandmother.
Porter brought young Countee to Harlem when he was nine. Sadly she was taken from young Countee in 1918. No known reliable information exists of his childhood until 1918 when he was adopted by Reverend and Mrs Frederick A. Cullen of Harlem, New York City. The Reverend was the local minister and founder of the Salem Methodist Episcopal Church.
When Cullen entered high school he went to DeWitt Clinton High School in The Bronx. He excelled at school academically while emphasizing his skills at poetry and in oratorical contest. At DeWitt he was elected into the honor society, editor of the weekly newspaper, and elected vice-president of his graduating class. He was an all around star at his school. In January 1922, he graduated with honors in Latin, Greek, Mathematics, and French.
After graduating high school, he started attending New York University. In 1923, he won second prize in the Witter Bynner undergraduate poetry contest, which was sponsored by the Poetry Society of America. He won with a poem entitled The Ballad of the Brown Girl. At around this time some of his poetry was featured in the national periodicals such as Harper's, Crisis, Opportunity, The Bookman, and Poetry. The following year he again placed second in the contest and finally winning it in 1925. Cull...
... middle of paper ...
...glass Junior High School in New York City. During this period, he also put out two writings for younger readers. In the last years of his life, Cullen wrote mostly for the theatre. He worked with Arna Bontemps to adapt his 1931 novel God Sends Sunday into St. Louis Woman for the musical stage.
The Broadway musical, set in poor African American neighborhood in St. Louis, was criticized by the African American community for creating a negative image of African Americans. In 1940, Cullen married Ida Mae Robertson, whom he had known for ten years. Sadly Cullen died from high blood pressure and uremic poisoning on January 9, 1946. A Harlem branch location of the New York Public Library bears Cullen's name. In 2013, he was inducted into the New York Writers Hall of Fame. Even though his is gone his legacy will live on through his inspirational and motivational writings.
Charles Cullen was born on February 22, 1960, in West Orange, New Jersey. He was the youngest of eight siblings. His father worked as a bus driver, and died at age 58 when Cullen was only seven months old. Two of his siblings also died in adulthood. His mother was a stay at home mom who raised the eight children. Charles Cullen described his life as miserable, he attempted suicide at age nine by drinking chemicals he got out of a chemistry set, he attempted suicide a total of twenty times throughout his life. On December 6, 1977, when Cullen was 17 years old his mother died in a car accident, while his sister was behind the wheel. After this accident, Charles Cullen was devastated and decided to drop out of high school and join the Navy. Cullen
Prior to being adopted his mother, Elizabeth Lucas, abandoned him leaving his paternal grandmother, Elizabeth Porter, to raise him until she died in 1918. Do to Cullen’s childhood confusion many are unaware of his place of birth. According to different sources he was born in Louisville, Kentucky, Baltimore, Maryland and New York. Cullen stated that he was born in New York City but no one is sure if he truly meant it.
When he returned from the army he got enrolled at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. He received M.A. degree and began to work on his Ph.D. at the same time he started teaching at University of Minnesota and later at MacAlester College. He received Ph.D. from University of Washington for study on Charles Dickens and he did public readings. He taught at Hunter College in New York City from 1966 to 1980. He also worked as translator. He completed some of his poems as he was teaching in the college he states that he didn’t feel any conflict between the duties of teaching and the labors of writing books which are non-academic.
After graduation in 1920, he went to Mexico to teach English for a year. While on the train to Mexico, he wrote the poem “the Negro Speaks of Rivers”, which was published in the June 1921 issue of The Crisis, a leading black publication. After his academic year at Columbia, he lived for a year in Harlem, embarked on a six-month voyage as a cabin boy on a merchant freighter bound for West Africa. After its return, he took a job on a ship sailing to Holland.
...e. For many years after his death, Countee Cullen's Reputation was eclipsed by that of other Harlem Renaissance writers, particularly Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston and his work had gone out of print. In the last few years, however, there has been a resurgence of interest in cullen's life and work and his writings are being reissued.
Once Hughes graduated from high school some of his work began to be published in magazines. During his college years he became a very important key figure with his poetry during the Harlem Renaissance which took place in New York; and it was a literary, artistic, cultural, and intellectual movement that began soon after World War I and ended in the 1930's. The movement brought up huge issues in the lives of African Americans
Born a slave in Kent County Maryland; to Henrietta and George Trusty, on December 23, 1815. He had a large family, 11 members. While attending a funeral, his family escaped in a covered wagon. They landed in Wilmington Delaware, eventually moving to New York. He received his education at from the African Free School and the Phoenix High School for Colored Youth. He had a passion for Science and English.
F. Scott Fitzgerald studied at Newman School, a Catholic prep school found in New Jersey (“F. Scott Fitzgerald” St. James). Fitzgerald played for their football team (“F. Scott Fitzgerald” American). He spent two years at the Newman School then enrolled at Princeton in 1913. He was placed on academic probation in 1917 and figured that it was highly unlikely for him to graduate. So he left Princeton and went to the Army (“F. Scott Fitzgerald” St. James).
Miranda had gone to school at Hunter College Elementary School and Hunter College High School, later majoring in Theatre Studies at Wesleyan University. It was one of his teachers who asked him to first write a musical, fanning a spark into the flame that would be his career as a playwright and lyricist
Emmett Till was born into the loving arms of Mamie Till and her mother. Before his birth, Emmett’s father, Louis Till, was deployed to Italy. Emmett was born on July 25th, 1941. His mother worked several jobs and was hardly home. Young Emmett helped his grandmother and mother keep the house clean. He was raised mostly by his grandmother. Mamie described him as an adventurous and independent-minded child. Even after contracting polio at the age of six, he never stopped his love for exploration.
In 1971 of January, he married Tabitha Spruce. They met in the Fogler Library at University of Maine at Orono. They were both students at the university. Since he could not be a teacher automatically, him and his wife, Tabitha, worked at an industrial laundry. He started his short story writing with Men’s Magazine. He sold his stories really well through this. In 1967, He sold many books including ‘The Glass Floor’. He finally became an English teacher at Hampden High School. After his mother’s death, he and Tabitha decided to go to Colorado. After 4 years of staying in Colorado, they went back to Maine.
James Langston Hughes was born February 1, 1902, in Joplin , Missouri . His parents divorced when he was a small child, and his father moved to Mexico . He was raised by his grandmother until he was thirteen, when he moved to Lincoln , Illinois , to live with his mother and her husband, before the family eventually settled in Cleveland , Ohio . It was in Lincoln , Illinois , that Hughes began writing poetry. Following graduation, he spent a year in Mexico and a year at Columbia University . During these years, he held odd jobs as an assistant cook, launderer, and a busboy, and travelled to Africa and Europe working as a seaman. In November 1924, he moved to Washington , D.C. Hughes's first book of poetry, The Weary Blues, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1926. He finished his college education at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania three years later. In 1930 his first novel, Not Without Laughter, won the Harmon gold medal for literature.
1929 when he took third place in a national essay contest. Williams started college at
Emmett was born and half heartedly raised in southern San Fran in what could be identified as a shack. He was an only child and the most his mother had to her name was about 20 dollars and broken, rusty old green chevrolet.
he published his poems not knowing how people would react . while he published he also contributed to burton's gentleman's magazine . “while still in boston he published at his own expense a thin volume , tamerlane and other poems ‘’’by a bostonian,”’ which passed and noticed that did so at such an early date he was only eighteen in spite of his reduced circumstances”(ian scott 976). After that he became a respected critic and essayist and he soon got ownership of the broadway journal. He was on the rise “it was the start of his career as a respected critic and essayist other publications which he contributed to where burton’s gentleman's magazine (1839-1840). Graham’s magazine (1841-1842) and evening mirror and godeys ladys book” (bio2)