Countee Cullen Accomplishments

Countee Cullen was born as Countee LeRoy Porter on May 30, 1903. Countee was very shy from personal matters, so some details of his life are unclear. He might have been abandoned by his parents at birth, as no one knows exactly what happened. When Cullen was nine, he was brought to New York and raised until he was eleven by Mrs. Porter, his paternal grandmother. When she died in 1918, Cullen was unofficially adopted by Frederick Ashbury Cullen, a minister at a church in Harlem. It is believed that Cullen’s birth mother did not try to contact him until Cullen had become well known in the 1920’s. Cullen began writing poetry as a young boy and won a citywide poetry contest, resulting in his poetry being widely printed. He attended Townsend Harris High School for one year before attending the DeWitt Clinton High …show more content…
He wrote a series of articles that were published in The Crisis in the spring and summer of 1929. His major achievement was the publication of The Black Christ and Other Poems. Several years went by before he published another collection of poetry, but during that time, Cullen explored other forms of literature. In 1932, he published his only novel, One Way to Heaven. Cullen also wrote poems and stories for children. He declined several teaching positions at southern universities because he felt that the North was less racist in a way. However, in 1934, he joined the faculty of the all-black Frederick Douglass Junior High School in New York as a French teacher. He continued to teach, write, lecture, and work in the community for the rest of his life. Cullen had previously declared that he had no desire to remarry, but in 1940 he reconsidered and married Ida Mae Roberson, who he had met some years before. In the early 1940’s, Cullen published two volumes for children: The Lost Zoo and My Lives and How I Lost

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