One of the first educated poets to be considered a cross-over phenomenon was Countee Porter. A writer in many avenues including: poetry, anthology, novels, translation, children’s books, and playwriting, he received recognition for his ability to write eclectically with power and influence. His poetry addressed racial issues as well as issues within the African American race.
     Porter was born on March 13, 1903 and although it is unknown where he was born, he has spent most of his life in New York. By the age of fifteen, he received the last name Cullen when he was adopted off the record by Reverend Frederick and Carolyn Cullen. Reverend Cullen was a conservative Methodist minister who was also one of the pioneer black activists of his time.
     At Dewitt Clinton High School, Countee Cullen began his writing career with the job as newspaper editor of Magpie, the school’s literary magazine. With this position, he also incorporated his earlier poetry into the magazine and received recognition for his work. After graduating from high school in 1921, he attended New York University and graduated in 1925 as a Phi Beta Kappa. That fall, Cullen attended Harvard and received a master’s degree in English and French.
     At Harvard, Cullen wrote three volumes of poetry and he worked as an assistant editor at Opportunity magazine.  The volumes included: Color (1925), Copper Sun (1927) and The Ballad of the Brown Girl (1927).  Although he was well known for Color, he sparked controversy with Langston Hughes in a review of “The Weary Blues” in an edition of Opportunity in 1926.  Cullen cautioned Hughes to avoid being a “racial artist.”  Cullen’s editorial led Hughes to write The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain.
     On April 9, 1928, Cullen married Yolande Du Bois, the only daughter of W.E.B. Du Bois.  Two years later, they divorced which, in turn, had a negative affect on Cullen’s poetry.  Finally, he became a French teacher at Frederick Douglas Junior High School until 1946 when he died of high blood pressure and uremia poisoning.
     During his life, Cullen was a liberal poet that believed art is more than the exclusive focus of racial lifestyles. Although he didn't limit his writing themes, Cullen earned most of his recognition from his poems that dealt with racial issues.   Due to the burden caused by his unconventional style of writing and his personal problems, Cullen withdrew from writing before his death.  Posthumously, Countee Cullen’s reputation was “eclipsed” by those of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston.

http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?

I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind
And did He stoop to quibble could tell why
The little buried mole continues blind,
Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die,

Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus
Is baited by the fickle fruit, declare
If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus
To struggle up a never-ending stair.

Inscrutable His ways are, and immune
To catechism by a mind too strewn
With petty cares to slightly understand
What awful brain compels His awful hand.

Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:
To make a poet black, and bid him sing!

http://www.nku.edu/~diesmanj/cullen.html#yetdoimarvel

     The most controversial and well known poet of the Harlem Renaissance was James Langston Hughes.  Hughes wrote many essays, short stories, plays juvenile poetry and fiction as well as an autobiography.  His style of writing merged blues and jazz music with poetry which caused a lot of controversy during his lifetime.

     Born on February 1, 1902 in Joplin, Missouri, Hughes was raised by his grandmother in Lawrence, Kansas.  Hughes started writing poetry at an early age and by the time he was in the eighth grade, he became known as the class poet. At Central High School in Cleveland, Ohio, he ran track and wrote for the school magazine. 

     Upon graduation, he attended Columbia University by the financial support of his father.  His father’s aspiration for young Hughes was to study engineering; however, he dropped out of school to pursue writing full time.  The Negro Speaks of Rivers was the first published poem by Hughes.  Later, Hughes returned to school and earned a bachelors degree at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania in 1929.

     Earlier in 1926, Hughes published The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain.  In it he writes that a Negro who is trying to be a poet is, to him, like trying to be white.  It is “the desire to be as little Negro and as much American as possible.”  He continues by saying that such people may have been raised by parents who hide or discriminate their own race.  The “common elements,” on the other hand, are unconventional people who embrace the African American culture and stand against the structure of America.  Hughes concludes that he is ashamed for the “non-common elements” and of the Negros who can’t appreciate other Negros and their work.

     During his life, Hughes realized that the reason why some Negro artists were not well-known was because their own people did not appreciate them.  He discovered that the mid-upper class Blacks didn’t give other Negro artists recognition until their art was acknowledged by white people.  He observed that the pressures of being a Negro artist not only comes from bribes by whites, but that an artist also goes through an enormous amount of criticism and misinterpretation from the African American community.  For instance, Paul L. Dunbar didn’t receive any positive recognition for his work from neither race.  Hughes said, “Dunbar’s dialect brought the encouragement one would give a sideshow freak or a clown,” in The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain.

     Langston Hughes was a radical poet who wrote down-to-earth poetry that focused on issues of the times.  Because of this technique, his writing appealed to many people even after he died of cancer on May 22, 1967.

http://www.nku.edu/~diesmanj/hughes.html

*Below is a poem by Langston Hughes that inspired Lorraine Hansberry's "Raisin In the Sun."*

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?prmID=84