Countee Cullen

(1903 - 1946)

Before graduating from New York University in 1925, Countee Cullen published his first collection of poetry, Colors. He received his master’s degree from Harvard University in 1926, soon working as an assistant editor for Opportunity magazine and marrying Yolande Du Bois, daughter of W.E.B. From 1934 until his death at the age of forty-two in 1946, Cullen taught French and English at New York City’s Frederick Douglass High School, where James Baldwin was among his students.