Cullen sails for France with his father and Harold Jackman
Poet involved
What happened
On 30 June 1928, a little more than two months after marrying Yolande Du Bois in Harlem, Countee Cullen left the United States for France on his Guggenheim year. He travelled with his foster father, the Reverend Frederick A. Cullen, and his close friend the teacher Harold Jackman; Yolande was to follow later. The party made Paris their base among other Black American artists then living abroad.
Literary impact
The departure split Cullen’s public fairy-tale marriage from the private companionship that Harlem gossip already associated with Jackman. In Paris he finished poems for The Black Christ while the marriage unravelled, a fracture that darkened his later lyrics of love, concealment, and disappointment.
Source: Wikipedia
