Incident

by
Countee Cullen

[Biography of Countee Cullen]

Countee Cullen, whose real surname was Porter, was born on May 30, 1903. Nothing is known about where he was born, and little is known of his parents. An orphan in New York City, he was adopted by the Reverend Frederick A. and Mrs. Carolyn Cullen, whose name he took. His youth was comfortable and protected. Following graduation from the predominantly white DeWitt Clinton High School, where he won a high school poetry contest, he attended New York University. In 1925 he took a baccalaureate degree, and his first book of poems, Color, was published. He earned a master's degree at Harvard and then became assistant editor of Opportunity, which gave publicity to the African American artists who contributed so much to the cultural awakening of the 1920s. In 1927 he edited Caroling Dusk, an anthology of verse by black poets of the 1920s. This publication proved to be of much value to the poets of the Harlem Renaissance.

Ballad Of The Brown Girl and Copper Sun, both published in 1927, show no advance and no development from the poems in his first volume. In 1928 he married Yolande, the only daughter of the African American radical and activist W.E.B. Du Bois. His marriage lasted only through the first year of a 2-year visit to France, where he completed the long, narrative poem The Black Christ, which became the title poem of his fourth volume. In 1932 he published his only novel, One Way To Heaven, a social comedy of lower-class blacks and the bourgeoisie in New York City. The Medea And Some Poems (1935) was his last book of verse. From 1934 to 1945 he taught French in a New York public school. He also collaborated on a musical play, St. Louis Woman (1946), which opened on March 31, 1949. Cullen had died earlier, on January 9, 1946. On These I Stand, his own selection of his best poems, was published in 1947.

Living in New York, where blacks and whites were more or less on the same footing, Cullen didn’t grow up under the racial oppression and hatred which the black community experienced in the Southern states, but nevertheless felt it was his duty to write about the culture and position of the black population in America. However, although he knew what was going on in African American life, he was not deeply involved. Though he later claimed that his poetry "treated of the heights and depths of emotion which I feel as a Negro," he did not want to be known as an African American poet. All his life he stayed aloof from action and affirmative argument about race. He did manage to bring black themes to the attention of the white population though, which is no mean feat in itself. This was due in part to the fact that his poetry was rather traditional. He wrote that he "wanted to be a poet as he understood poets to be."

[Historical background]

At the start of the American Civil War (1861-1865) most white Americans in the North were not willing to fight to end Southern slavery. They fought instead to preserve the Union and prevent slavery from spreading into the Western territories. Many Southerners fought to protect and expand slavery. Even most Southerners who did not own slaves considered slavery the essential foundation of 'the Southern way of life.' African Americans hoped the Civil War would bring about the abolition of slavery. In April 1865 the Union defeated the Confederacy and slavery came to an end. In December of that year the states ratified the 13th amendment that formally abolished slavery.

After 1877 Democratic governments were in power in all the Southern states and they continued taking away black rights. Northern whites were tired of spending time and money on the South. As a result the discrimination and oppression of the African Americans in the South went largely unchallenged. By the late 1870s much of the optimism of emancipation had faded. The 1880s witnessed a profusion of segregationist legislation separating blacks and whites. The system of Southern segregation was often called the Jim Crow system after an 1830s minstrel show character. This character, a black slave, embodied negative stereotypes of blacks. One after another Southern states passed laws segregating blacks and restricting African American rights in almost every conceivable way. For example, Tennessee initiated segregated seating on railroad cars in 1881. In Alabama laws prohibited blacks and whites from playing checkers together. In Louisiana statutes ordered that there be separate entrances for blacks and whites at circuses. All Southern states prohibited interracial marriages. Bessie Smith, a celebrated singer, was severely injured in a car accident. She was taken to a 'black' hospital, even though it was further away than the nearby 'white' hospital, because, being a black woman, she wouldn’t have been accepted there. She died.

As Democrats reasserted political authority in the South African Americans had few legal or humanitarian protections. Blacks were hanged without formal charge or trial. The reported lynchings increased from about 50 a year in the early 1880s to about 75 a year in the mid-1880s and averaging well over 100 a year during the 1890s. Between 1890 and 1900 more than 1200 African American men and women were lynched in the United States. On his website Without Sanctuary James Allan shows photographs and postcards taken as souvenirs at lynchings. The material is very disturbing. By the end of the 19th century Southern black people lived under the constant threat of terrorism, were denied access to public facilities supported by their taxes, were relegated to the worst schools, and laboured under an unjust economic system enforced by discriminatory laws. At the time the Ku Klux Klan, an organization that advocated white supremacy, counted millions of members.

In 1914 World War I broke out in Europe. American industry needed labour and the war slowed European immigration. In response Northern manufacturers recruited Southern black workers to fill factory jobs. From 1910 to 1930 between 1.5 million and 2 million African Americans left the South for the industrial cities of the North. As black communities in Northern cities grew black working people became the clientele for an expanding black professional and business class gaining in political and economic power. Many social conflicts gradually gave way to an increasing sense of racial pride and social cohesion. While Jim Crow laws and political terrorism continued to discourage blacks from voting in the South African Americans in Northern cities became an important political force. Black fraternal orders, political organizations, social clubs, and newspapers asserted an urban consciousness that became the foundation for the militancy and African American cultural innovations of the 1920s.

During the 1920s Harlem, a neighbourhood in New York City, became the North's largest and the world's best-known African American community. It was the home of the Harlem Renaissance, a black cultural community of intellectuals, poets, novelists, actors, musicians, and painters. This community included Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen. Their work was published by white patrons and black newspaper and magazine editors and found a wide audience in the United States and Europe.

In the late 1930s and the early 1940s the attention of African Americans focused on events in Europe — rise of dictators, Germany's invasion of Eastern Europe, and Italy's invasion of Ethiopia. African Americans were quick to recognize the danger of Nazism and its theories of Aryan superiority. To many it resembled the segregationist rhetoric of the American South. At the Berlin Olympics of 1936 black track star Jesse Owens carried the pride of nonwhites as he symbolically confronted Hitler's theories. In races against Germans and other Europeans Owens won four gold medals.

The late 1940s saw the colour barrier fall in many areas of society that had been all white. One of the most dramatic instances occurred in 1947 when Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers becoming the first black to play major league baseball in the 20th century.

In the 1950s the Civil Rights Movement was born. A black activist named Rosa Parks became an early symbol of the struggle when in December 1955 she was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama for refusing to give up her seat to a white man and move to the back of a city bus. Parks’s actions resulted in a boycott of the city’s buses. The black community faced threats and violence but continued the boycott for more than a year until the Supreme Court demanded the integration of Alabama buses.

The growing power of the Civil Rights Movement was demonstrated on August 28, 1963 when more than 200,000 peaceful demonstrators marched on Washington, D.C. Protest leaders called for congressional action in civil rights and employment legislation and Martin Luther King Jr. electrified listeners with his "I Have A Dream" speech. You can watch and hear King deliver his speech on the YouTube website. In November President Kennedy was assassinated and in the aftermath of this tragedy the civil rights bill that had languished in Congress was passed in June 1964. It outlawed discrimination based on race, colour, religion, sex, or national origin in voting, employment, and public services, such as transportation. Six months later Martin Luther King Jr. became the youngest person ever to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. On April 4, 1968 King was shot dead in Memphis, Tennessee. The assassination led to a nationwide wave of riots in more than sixty cities.

African Americans have improved their social economic standing significantly since then and recent decades have witnessed the expansion of a robust African American middle class across the United States. Unprecedented access to higher education and employment has been gained by African Americans in the post-civil rights era. However, due in part to the legacy of slavery, racism and discrimination, African Americans as a group remain at a pronounced economic, educational and social disadvantage in many areas relative to whites.

[Opening assignment for students]

Make groups of 3 to 4 students. Give each group the 12 lines of Incident on separate pieces of paper. Have them recreate the poem by rearranging the lines. If necessary you can put the rhyme scheme on the blackboard (abcb abcb abcb).

[Questions (and answers) for class discussion]

-1-
We know that the poem is set in Baltimore, Maryland, which is in the South of the United States. We also know that the speaker of the poem looks back in time - "Once ..." - and that he refers to "old" Baltimore. Which other clues can you find inside but also outside the poem's text that could help us determine in which period of time it is set?
(It is probably set before World War I, in 1911. The poet's date of birth is 1903 and he is eight years old in the poem. The "riding" most likely refers to a horse-and-wagon. It was not until after World War I that cars were used.)

-2-
In the second line of the poem we find the word "glee", which means something like "a feeling of extreme happiness". Still, going for a carriage ride in a city is an everyday experience. Knowing as we do that the poet was brought up in New York, why is "riding in old Baltimore" such a very happy event for him?
(He is a tourist in a strange city. In those days people travelled much less. The boy must have felt extremely priviliged riding in that carriage in Baltimore.)

-3-
When you keep looking straight at someone, like the Baltimorean does in line 4, what are you actually doing and which word is normally used to describe this?
(It is called staring and could be interpreted as very rude.)

-4-
A poem needs tension and you get this from contrast. What contrasts are there in the first stanza?
(Roaming eyes vs. staring eyes; good will vs. bad will; movement vs. fixation; freedom vs. rigidity.)

-5-
Why does the narrator point out the similarity between himself and the Baltimorean, i.e. they are both small and probably of the same age?
(It emphasises the contrast between the narrator's and the boy's attitudes. The words "And so" signal a conclusion: the narrator sees the similarities between himself and the boy as a good reason to try and become friends with the boy. For the narrator the similarities are important, whereas for the Baltimorean the differences in race are.)

-6-
Clearly the Baltimorean, although only a little boy himself, is no stranger to racial prejudice. There is one word in the first stanza which indicates that the narrator, who is probably of the same age, still is. Which word is that and why?
(He calls the other boy a "Baltimorean". He defines the boy by the place he comes from, not by the colour of his skin.)

-7-
We know the poet was born and brought up in New York and all black people there originally came from the South or their parents did. What does this information tell us about the possible reason for the narrator's visit to Baltimore?
(He is there for eight months, presumably on an extended visit to family.)

-8-
The word "Nigger" is such a bad, offensive word that it is not used, for example, on American TV - it is referred to as "the 'N' word". What does the use of this word by a very young white boy toward a black child of his own age tell us about racial prejudice in Baltimore at that time?
(It was seen as the norm and not frowned upon at all.)

-9-
What would lead a young boy of eight to insult another young boy in this way? How is a child’s prejudice even more disturbing than an adult’s?
(The child must have been indoctrinated by his parents. He does not know better. It means that it will be very difficult to eradicate this kind of prejudice from society.)

-10-
What exactly is racial prejudice? Do we have to use a word like "Nigger" to be guilty of racial prejudice?
(Prejudice of any kind means that we judge people before we even know them according to the group that they belong to instead of seeing them as individual beings in their own right. There is a difference between individual prejudice, e.g. against Moroccans in Holland, and racial prejudice as a social structure which is supported by legislation, e.g. South Africa's regime of Apartheid or the segregation in the United States.)

-11-
Why are we told that the narrator saw "the whole of Baltimore" and that he was there "from May until December"? Why this extensiveness?
(It dramatises and highlights the last line.)

-12-
Why is the boy calling him "Nigger" the only thing he remembers?
(He must have felt devastated by it. He has borne the scar his whole life and has even written a poem about it. The word caused him to begin viewing the world in terms of 'black and white', and the racial epithet established an invisible barrier between the black and the white worlds.)

-13-
The rhyme scheme of the poem causes a sing-song sound to it. How does this affect what you expect to come in the poem?
(You expect to read about nice, joyful things, instead you read about the opposite.)

-14-
The dictionary tells us that "incident" means "minor event". Why do you think the poet chose this particular title?
(It is ironic. Although the incident was only one very small moment during all of those eight months, its impact has been tremendous. The "incident" could even be said to have been the loss of innocence for the narrator, so in fact it was no incident but a very important event!)

-15-
What is your opinion of the poem? Do you feel it is still relevant?
(Of course answers may vary.)

[Closing assignment for students]

Remember the time you were a victim in a racist incident, or when you were a witness to such an occurrence. What exactly happened? What were your feelings at the time? And afterwards?
Write about the incident and your reactions to it in
- a letter to your best friend, or
- a letter to your mother, or
- a letter to the agony aunt of a magazine, or
- a 'letter to the editor' of a newspaper, or
- a poem.