TODAY - May 30, 2026

An American poet, novelist and educator, was born on 30 May 1903. He earned a bachelor's degree from New York University in 1925. While in high school and college, Cullen won a number of poetry contests. Soon after graduating he published his first volume of poetry, Color. After earning a master's degree from Harvard University in 1926, Cullen became assistant editor of Opportunity magazine. In 1927 he published a second collection of verse, Copper Sun. That same year Cullen also compiled and edited The Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Negro Poets. Cullen's carefully crafted poems were widely admired by both whites and blacks. Although the Harlem Renaissance a flowering of African American arts and literature in the 1920s had encouraged many black writers to experiment with new literary forms, Cullen's poetry remained very traditional. He was heavily influenced by the work of English poet John Keats and other Romantics and liked sonnets, ballads, and other traditional forms. Cullen published The Black Christ and Other Poems, featuring the title poem, which compared the plight of contemporary African Americans to the suffering of Jesus Christ. Cullen's only novel, One Way to Heaven, examined the significance of class divisions in black society. Cullen published two books for children, The Lost Zoo and My Lives and How I Lost Them, both of which he playfully claimed were written in collaboration with a house cat. Shortly before his death he compiled On These I Stand: An Anthology of the Best Poems of Cullen, which was published posthumously in 1948..

Author : Dr. Nidhi Jindal