American writer and teacher Countee Cullen was BOTD in 1903. Born to a single mother, his exact birthplace is unknown, and may have been New York City, Baltimore, or Louisville, Kentucky. His parents and brother are thought to have died when he was a child, and he was raised in Harlem by his grandmother, before being adopted by a Methodist minister. He attended high school in the Bronx, where he was a star student, editing his high school newspaper and winning a city-wide poetry competition, and befriended fellow student Harold Jackman, who became a lifelong friend. He studied at New York University and Harvard College, publishing his debut volume of poetry, Color, in 1925. His later publications Copper Sun and The Ballad of the Brown Girl, exploring his African-American identity, made him a star of the burgeoning Harlem Renaissance movement. His 1929 volume The Black Christ and Other Poems caused controversy for his comparison of a lynched Black man to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. He socialised with the key figures of the Harlem Renaissance, including Langston Hughes, Wallace Thurman, W. E. B. Du Bois, Gladys Bentley, Carl Van Vechten and particularly Alain LeRoy Locke, who attempted (unsuccessful) to help Cullen accept his homosexuality. Intent on living a heterosexual life, Cullen married W. E. B. Du Bois’ daughter Yolande in 1928, after being introduced by Jackman. Two months later, Cullen confessed his sexuality to Yolande and promptly left for Paris with Jackman, prompting widespread rumours that they were lovers. Returning to New York, he became a teacher at Frederick Douglass Junior High School, mentoring many young writers including James Baldwin. Largely abandoning poetry, he published the novel One Way to Heaven, a series of children’s books, a well-regarded translation of Euripedes’ Medea and and a stage adaptation of his own novel. After divorcing Du Bois, he married Ida Mae Roberson, living with her until his death in 1946, aged 42. He is also thought to have had affairs with his friend Edward Atkinson, with whom he shared a passionate correspondence.