Earl Cullen was probably born on 30 May, although due to differing accounts of the actual date in his early life, a general application of the year of his birth in 1903 is reasonable. He was born in New York, Baltimore or Lexington, Kentucky. Even though his late wife was convinced he was born in Lexington. Cullen was likely abandoned by his mother and raised by a woman named Mrs. Porter. Mrs Porter was thought to be his paternal grandmother. Porter took the young Countee to Harlem when he was nine. Unfortunately, she was taken away from the young Countee in 1918. No reliable information exists about his childhood until 1918, when he was adopted by the Rev. and Mrs. Frederick A. Cullen of Harlem, New York City. The reverend was the local minister and founder of the Salem Methodist Episcopal Church. When Cullen entered high school he went to DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx. He excelled in school academically, emphasizing his skills in poetry and oratory competitions. At DeWitt he was elected to the Honor Society, editor of the weekly newspaper, and elected vice president of his graduating class. He was an all-around star at his school. In January 1922 he graduated with honors in Latin, Greek, mathematics and French. After graduating from high school, he began attending New York University. In 1923 he won second prize in the Witter Bynner undergraduate poetry competition, sponsored by the Poetry Society of America. He won with a poem called The Ballad of the Brown Girl. During this period some of his poems appeared in national periodicals such as Harper's, Crisis, Opportunity, The Bookman, and Poetry. The following year he placed second again in the competition and finally won it in 1925. Cull...... middle of paper......glass Junior High School in New York City. In this period he also published two writings for younger readers. In the last years of his life, Cullen wrote mainly for the theater. He worked with Arna Bontemps to adapt her 1931 novel God Sends Sunday into St. Louis Woman for the musical stage. The Broadway musical, set in the poor African-American neighborhood of St. Louis, has been criticized by the African-American community for creating a negative image of African-Americans. In 1940, Cullen married Ida Mae Robertson, whom he had known for ten years. Sadly, Cullen died of high blood pressure and uremic poisoning on January 9, 1946. A Harlem branch of the New York Public Library bears Cullen's name. In 2013 he was inducted into the New York Writers Hall of Fame. Although he is no longer with us, his legacy will live on through his inspiring and motivational writings.