Countee Cullen

Countee Cullen -- poet, anthologist, novelist, translator, children's writer, and playwright, Countee Cullen is something of a mysterious figure. He was born March 30th, 1903 (died 1946), but it has been difficult for scholars to place exactly where he was born, with whom he spent the very earliest years of his childhood, and where he spent them. New York City and Baltimore have been given as birthplaces. Cullen himself, on his college transcript at New York University, lists Louisville, Kentucky, as his place of birth. A few years later, when he had achieved considerable literary fame during the era known as the New Negro or Harlem Renaissance, he was to assert that his birthplace was New York City, which he continued to claim for the rest of his life. Cullen’s second wife, Ida, and some of his closest friends, including Langston Hughes and Harold Jackman, said that Cullen was born in Louisville. As James Weldon Johnson wrote of Cullen in The Book of American Negro Poetry (rev. ed., 1931): "There is not much to say about these earlier years of Cullen--unless he himself should say it." And Cullen--revealing a temperament that was not exactly secretive but private, less a matter of modesty than a tendency toward being encoded and tactful -- never in his life said anything more clarifying.

-- Page from the December 1923 issue of Opportunity Magazine with poem, "When I Am Dead", signed by Countee Cullen (dated December 14, 1923). Countee was a mere 20 years of age at the signing of this autograph.
-- Color (First Edition, 1925) -- signed by Countee Cullen
-- Color (First Edition, 1925) -- with original book cover (3 additional copies)
-- Ballad of the Brown Girl (First Edition, 1927)
-- Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Negro Poets (2 copies -- First Edition, 1927)
-- Copper Sun (First Edition, 1927) -- signed by Countee Cullen
-- Copper Sun (First Edition, 1927) (3 more First Edition copies)
-- Black Christ and Other Poems (First Edition, 1927)
-- Black Christ and Other Poems (Third Edition, 1927)
-- On These I Stand (First Edition, 1947) -- along with an original advertisement card, with Countee's picture.
-- The Medea and Some Poems (First Edition, 1935)
-- An Anthology of the Best Poems of Countee Cullen (First Edition, 1947...published posthumously)