What is Africa to me: Copper sun or scarlet sea, Jungle star or jungle track, Strong bronzed men, or regal black Women from whose loins I sprang When the birds of Eden sang? One three centuries removed From the scenes his fathers loved, Spicy grove, cinnamon tree, What is Africa to me?
From "Heritage" [31]
The social, cultural, and artistic explosion known as the Harlem Renaissance was the first time in American history that a large body of literary, art and musical work was contributed by African-American writers and artists. Cullen was at the epicenter of this new-found surge in literature. He considered poetry to be raceless.[32] However, his poem "The Black Christ" took on a racial theme, exploring a black youth convicted of a crime he did not commit. "But shortly after in the early 1930s, his work was almost completely [free] of racial subject matter. His poetry instead focused on idyllic beauty and other classic romantic subjects."[32]
Cullen worked as assistant editor for Opportunity magazine, where his column, "The Dark Tower", increased his literary reputation. Cullen's poetry collections The Ballad of the Brown Girl (1927) and Copper Sun (1927) explored similar themes as Color, but they were not so well received. Cullen's Guggenheim Fellowship of 1928 enabled him to study and write abroad.
Between the years 1928 and 1934, Cullen traveled back and forth between France and the United States. By 1929 Cullen had published four volumes of poetry. The title poem of The Black Christ and Other Poems (1929) was criticized for its use of Christian religious imagery; Cullen compared the lynching of a black man to the crucifixion of Jesus.
The grave of Countee Cullen in Woodlawn Cemetery. (The stone is shared with Robert L. Cooper, the second husband (1953–1966) of Cullen's wife Ida.[33])As well as writing books, Cullen promoted the work of other black writers. But by 1930 his reputation as a poet had waned. In 1932, his only novel was published, One Way to Heaven, a social comedy of lower-class blacks and the bourgeoisie in New York City.
From 1934 until the end of his life, he taught English, French, and creative writing at Frederick Douglass Junior High School in New York City. During this period, he also wrote two works for young readers: The Lost Zoo (1940), poems about the animals who were killed in the Flood, and My Lives and How I Lost Them, an autobiography of his cat. Along with Herman W. Porter, Cullen also provided guidance to a young James Baldwin during his time at the school.
In the last years of his life, Cullen wrote mostly for the theatre. He worked with Arna Bontemps to adapt Bontemps's 1931 novel God Sends Sunday as the musical St. Louis Woman (1946, published in 1971). Its score was composed by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer, both white. The Broadway musical, set in a poor black neighborhood of St. Louis, Missouri, was criticized by black intellectuals for creating a negative image of black Americans. In another stretch, Cullen translated the Greek tragedy Medea by Euripides, which was published in 1935 as The Medea and Some Poems, with a collection of sonnets and short lyrics.[34]
Several years later, Cullen died from high blood pressure and uremic poisoning on January 9, 1946, aged 42.[34] He is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York City.[35]
