The Black Christ

IMPORTANT WORK FROM THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE - A NARRATIVE POEM ON LYNCHINGfirst edition 8vo. [12 (incl. preliminary blank)], 96pp., original black cloth backed patterned red paper covered boards, spine gilt lettered, endpapers of the same red paper boldly patterned in black, fore and lower edges untrimmed, the two terminal leaves lightly toned at gutter (offsetting from the endpaper), else a fine copy in the cream paper dust jacket which is printed in red and black on front panel and in black on 'spine' and rear panel. Jacket 'spine' and edges a shade darkened and a small triangular piece (with a few words of advertisement text) torn from the lower edge of its rear panel.

This English edition apparently precedes the first U.S. edition published later in 1929.
Countee Cullen (born Countee LeRoy Porter, 1903 - 1946), American black poet, novelist, children's writer, and playwright, was particularly well known during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. The Harlem Renaissance, a flowering of a fresh generation of African-American writers, was influenced by a movement called Négritude, a discovery of black values and of the black community's awareness of their situation. "Cullen saw Négritude as an awakening of a race consciousness and black modernism that flowed into Harlem" [wikipedia] and some of his poems reflect that movement's ideas.A brilliant student he attended N.Y.U., his verse had been published in national periodicals, and he had won poetry prizese before he entered Harvard in 1925 to pursue a masters in English and, at about the same time, publish his first collection of poems, Color which celebrated black beauty and deplored the effects of racism. Despite being uncertain as to his sexuality, Cullen married in 1928 and the wedding was the social event of the decade among the African-American elite. The newly married couple travelled to Paris on honeymoon in 1928 but divorced there in 1930.
"The social, cultural, and artistic explosion known as the Harlem Renaissance was the first time in American history that a large body of literary, art and musical work was contributed by African-American writers and artists. Countee Cullen was at the epicenter of this new-found surge in literature. Cullen considered poetry to be raceless. However, his poem 'The Black Christ' took on a racial theme, exploring a black youth convicted of a crime he did not commit. But shortly after in the early 1930s, his work was almost completely free of racial subject matter. His poetry instead focused on idyllic beauty and other classic romantic subjects" [wikipedia]."The title poem is a long narrative poem on the subject of lynching" [dust jacket blurb].