“Whether they relish the situation or not, Negroes should be concerned with making good impressions. They cannot do this by throwing wide every door of the racial entourage, to the wholesale gaze of the world at large. Decency demands that some things be kept secret; diplomacy demands it.”
About Countee Cullen
30 May 1903–9 January 1946
On May 30, 1903, a child was born who would become one of the most celebrated voices of the Harlem Renaissance, yet whose origins remain shrouded in the kind of mystery that seems almost poetic in retrospect. Countee Cullen's exact birthplace has been disputed—some records suggest New York City, others Louisville…