Cullen addresses the League of Youth in New York
Poet involved
What happened
In 1923 Countee Cullen spoke to the League of Youth at Town Hall in New York City, urging his generation to become an asset rather than a liability to the race. The address was printed in The Crisis in August 1923. Still an undergraduate at New York University, he was already being asked to speak as a model of the Talented Tenth.
Literary impact
The speech shows how early Cullen’s public voice mixed civic duty with lyric ambition. Its language of lift and burden would echo in later verse about responsibility, race, and the cost of being held up as an example.
Source: Wikipedia
