Countee Cullen was possibly born on May 30, although because of different accounts of the actual date in his early life, a general application of the year of his birth as 1903 is reasonable. He was either born in New York, Baltimore, or Lexington, Kentucky. Although his late wife was convinced that he was born in Lexington. Cullen was possibly abandoned by his mother, and raised by a woman named Mrs. Porter. Mrs. Porter was thought to be his paternal grandmother.
Porter brought young Countee to Harlem when he was nine. Sadly she was taken from young Countee in 1918. No known reliable information exists of his childhood until 1918 when he was adopted by Reverend and Mrs Frederick A. Cullen of Harlem, New York City. The Reverend was the local minister and founder of the Salem Methodist Episcopal Church.
When Cullen entered high school he went to DeWitt Clinton High School in The Bronx. He excelled at school academically while emphasizing his skills at poetry and in oratorical contest. At DeWitt he was elected into the honor society, editor of the weekly newspaper, and elected vice-president of his graduating class. He was an all around star at his school. In January 1922, he graduated with honors in Latin, Greek, Mathematics, and French.
After graduating high school, he started attending New York University. In 1923, he won second prize in the Witter Bynner undergraduate poetry contest, which was sponsored by the Poetry Society of America. He won with a poem entitled The Ballad of the Brown Girl. At around this time some of his poetry was featured in the national periodicals such as Harper's, Crisis, Opportunity, The Bookman, and Poetry. The following year he again placed second in the contest and finally winning it in 1925. Cull...
... middle of paper ...
...glass Junior High School in New York City. During this period, he also put out two writings for younger readers. In the last years of his life, Cullen wrote mostly for the theatre. He worked with Arna Bontemps to adapt his 1931 novel God Sends Sunday into St. Louis Woman for the musical stage.
The Broadway musical, set in poor African American neighborhood in St. Louis, was criticized by the African American community for creating a negative image of African Americans. In 1940, Cullen married Ida Mae Robertson, whom he had known for ten years. Sadly Cullen died from high blood pressure and uremic poisoning on January 9, 1946. A Harlem branch location of the New York Public Library bears Cullen's name. In 2013, he was inducted into the New York Writers Hall of Fame. Even though his is gone his legacy will live on through his inspirational and motivational writings.
F. Scott Fitzgerald studied at Newman School, a Catholic prep school found in New Jersey (“F. Scott Fitzgerald” St. James). Fitzgerald played for their football team (“F. Scott Fitzgerald” American). He spent two years at the Newman School then enrolled at Princeton in 1913. He was placed on academic probation in 1917 and figured that it was highly unlikely for him to graduate. So he left Princeton and went to the Army (“F. Scott Fitzgerald” St. James).
By 1921, McKay had become the associate editor of a magazine called, The Liberator, a socialist magazine of art and literature. In 1922, Harcourt, Brace and Company published a collection of seven poems called, Harlem Shadows. This made him receive the status of being the first significant black poet. Even though he was considered an African-American icon, McKay said he still considered himse...
Countee LeRoy Cullen was one of the leading poets of the Harlem Renaissance. Although there is no real account of his early life, his accomplishments throughout his time was magnificent. During the Harlem Renaissance, he and other writers and poets used their work to empower blacks and talk about the ongoing struggle of blacks. His poem, “Incident”, depicts how overt racism was and how it attacked anyone regardless age or gender.
Some of his other works include Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917) which was followed by his pioneering anthology Book of American Negro Poetry (1922) and books of American Negro Spirituals (1925, 1926), collaborations with his brother.
In 1911, Cummings began his studies at Harvard. Throughout his college years he worked as an editor for the literary magazine. This would later influence his paintings and poetry. Cummings left Harvard in 1916 with a master’s degree, his first poems published the next year in the anthology, Eight Harvard Poets. These poems illustrated his early experiments in style and language for which he later became famous for (Constantakis).
When he was fifteen years old, his mother died from appendicitis. From fifteen years of age to his college years, he lived in an all-white neighborhood. From 1914-1917, he shifted from many colleges and academic courses of study as well as he changed his cultural identity growing up. He studied physical education, agriculture, and literature at a total of six colleges and universities from Wisconsin to New York. Although he never completed a degree, his educational pursuits laid the foundation for his writing career.
Freddie was a really smart kid he almost took high school as another sport pushing himself to work hard and fighting his hardest to get valedictorian. Freddie was ranked 25th scholastically in his class of 530. His senior year he received the “golden helmet”
Born a slave in Kent County Maryland; to Henrietta and George Trusty, on December 23, 1815. He had a large family, 11 members. While attending a funeral, his family escaped in a covered wagon. They landed in Wilmington Delaware, eventually moving to New York. He received his education at from the African Free School and the Phoenix High School for Colored Youth. He had a passion for Science and English.
Fitzgerald spent the first decade of his childhood mainly in Buffalo, New York, with a short time in Syracuse, New York. His parents, that were both very serious Catholics, sent Fitzgerald to two Catholic schools on the West Side of Buffalo called Holy Angels Convent and then Nardin Academy. His influential years in Buffalo revealed him to be a boy of unusual intelligence and drive with a keen early interest in literature, his caring mother guaranteeing that her son had all the advantages of an upper-middle-class background. In a somewhat uncommon way of parenting, Fitzgerald attended Holy Angels with the peculiar arrangement that he go for only half a day.
writing was weak during grade school, but his great pieces came his senior year at Harvard. He became editor for the Harvard Lampoon, which is the school’s newspaper.
At the age of thirteen he began working in order to earn money for college. He was a shoe shiner, an elevator boy, and a paper boy. He attended the all-black Armstrong High School, where he acted in plays, was a sergeant in the Cadet Corps, and earned good grades, graduating at the age of 16.
In 1971 of January, he married Tabitha Spruce. They met in the Fogler Library at University of Maine at Orono. They were both students at the university. Since he could not be a teacher automatically, him and his wife, Tabitha, worked at an industrial laundry. He started his short story writing with Men’s Magazine. He sold his stories really well through this. In 1967, He sold many books including ‘The Glass Floor’. He finally became an English teacher at Hampden High School. After his mother’s death, he and Tabitha decided to go to Colorado. After 4 years of staying in Colorado, they went back to Maine.
Percy Lavon Julian applied to DePauw University, where he had to take high school-level classes in the evening to catch up with classmates. It was very hard for Percy, but he kept trying and eventually graduated first in his class, with the Phi Beta Kappa honors.
1929 when he took third place in a national essay contest. Williams started college at
in high school in Cleveland, Ohio. In 1921 he entered Columbia University, but left after an