Editing Countee Cullen (section)

==Early life==

=== Childhood ===
Countee LeRoy Porter was born on May 30, 1903, to Elizabeth Thomas Lucas.<ref name=":02"/><ref name=":22">{{Cite web|url=https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/countee-cullen|title=Countee Cullen|date=2014-02-04|website=poets.org|access-date=May 16, 2017}}</ref> Due to a lack of records of his early childhood, historians have had difficulty identifying his birthplace. [[Baltimore|Baltimore, Maryland]], [[New York City]], and [[Louisville, Kentucky]] have been cited as  possibilities.<ref name=":02" /> Although Cullen claimed to have been born in New York City, he also frequently referred to [[Louisville, Kentucky]], as his birthplace on legal applications.<ref name=":02" /> Cullen was brought to [[Harlem]] at the age of nine by Amanda Porter, believed to be his paternal grandmother, who cared for him until her death in 1917.<ref name=":02"/><ref name=":42">{{Cite news|title=Countee Cullen: A renaissance poet|last=Williams|first=Jasmin K|date=April 11, 2012|work=The New York Amsterdam News}}</ref>

Reverend [[Frederick Asbury Cullen|Frederick A. Cullen]], pastor of Salem [[Methodist Episcopal Church]], Harlem's largest congregation, and his wife, the former Carolyn Belle Mitchell, adopted the 15-year-old Countee Porter, although the adoption may not have been official.<ref name=":02" /><ref name=":12">{{Cite web|url=https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/countee-cullen#poet|title=Countee Cullen|website=Poetry Foundation|access-date=May 16, 2017}}</ref> Frederick Cullen was a central figure in Countee's life, and acted as his father. The influential minister eventually became president of the Harlem chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ([[National Association for the Advancement of Colored People|NAACP]]).<ref name=":12" />

===DeWitt Clinton High School===
Cullen entered the [[DeWitt Clinton High School]], then located in [[Hell's Kitchen]].<ref name="Perry: 4; cf. Shucard: 10">Perry: 4; cf. Shucard: 10.</ref> He excelled academically at the school and started writing poetry. He won a citywide poetry contest.<ref>Shucard: 10; cf. Perry: 4.</ref> At DeWitt, he was elected into the honor society, was editor of the weekly newspaper, and was elected vice-president of his graduating class.<ref name="Perry: 4; cf. Shucard: 10"/> In January 1922, he graduated with honors in Latin, Greek, Mathematics, and French.<ref>Perry: 5.</ref>

===New York University, Harvard University and early publications===
{{Quote box |width=300px |align=right|quoted=true |bgcolor=#FFFFF0 |salign=right
 |quote  =<poem>
'''"Yet Do I Marvel"'''

I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind, 
And did He stoop to quibble could tell why 
The little buried mole continues blind, 
Why flesh that mirrors Him must someday die, 
Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus 
Is baited by the fickle fruit, declare 
If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus 
To struggle up a never-ending stair. 
Inscrutable His ways are, and immune 
To catechism by a mind too strewn 
With petty cares to slightly understand 
What awful brain compels His awful hand. 
Yet do I marvel at this curious thing: 
To make a poet black, and bid him sing! 
</poem>

 |source = "Yet Do I Marvel" (1925)<ref>Cullen, [http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171320 "Yet Do I Marvel"], Poetry Foundation.</ref>
}}

After graduating from high school, he attended [[New York University]] (NYU).<ref>Perry: 5 cf. Shucard: 7.</ref> In 1923, at the [[The Town Hall (New York City)|Town Hall]] in New York City, he gave a speech to the League of Youth in which he said, “For we must be one thing or the other, an asset or a liability, the sinew in your wing to help you soar, or the chain to bind you to earth.” The speech was later printed in ''[[The Crisis]]'' (August 1923).<ref name=":10" /> Also in 1923, Cullen won second prize in the [[Witter Bynner]] National Competitions for Undergraduate Poetry, sponsored by the Poetry Society of America, for his book of poems titled, "The Ballad of the Brown Girl".<ref>Perry: 6.</ref> Soon after, he was publishing poetry in national periodicals such as [[Harper's Magazine|''Harper's'']], ''The Crisis'', [[Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life|''Opportunity'']], [[The Bookman (New York)|''The Bookman'']], and [[Poetry (magazine)|''Poetry'']], earning him a national reputation.<!--Perry: 7--> The ensuing year, he again placed second in the contest, finally winning first prize in 1925.<!--Perry: 7--> He competed in a poetry contest sponsored by ''Opportunity''<!--Perry: 7--> and came in second with "To One Who Say Me Nay", losing to [[Langston Hughes]]'s "[[The Weary Blues]]". Cullen graduated from NYU in 1925 and was one of eleven students selected to [[Phi Beta Kappa]].

That same year, Cullen entered [[Harvard]] to pursue a [[Master's degree|master's]] in English, and published ''Color'', his first collection of poems that later became a landmark of the [[Harlem Renaissance]].<ref name="Perry: 7">Perry: 7.</ref> Written in a careful, traditional style, the work celebrated black beauty and deplored the effects of racism. The volume included "Heritage" and "[[Incident (poem)|Incident]]", probably his most famous poems. "Yet Do I Marvel", about racial identity and injustice, showed the literary influence of [[William Wordsworth]] and [[William Blake]], but its subject was far from the world of their Romantic sonnets. The poet accepts that there is God, and "God is good, well-meaning, kind", but he finds a contradiction in his own plight in a racist society: he is black and a poet.<ref name="shucard"/> In 1926, Cullen graduated with a master's degree<ref name="shucard">Shucard: 7.</ref> while also serving as the guest editor of a special "Negro Poets" issue of the poetry magazine, ''Palms''. The appointment led to ''Harper's'' inviting him to edit an anthology of Black poetry in 1927.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Potter |first1=Vilma |title=Idella Purnell's PALMS and Godfather Witter Bynner |journal=American Periodicals |date=1994 |volume=4 |pages=55–56 |jstor=20771064 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/20771064 |access-date= March 30, 2022}}</ref>