Good Morning POU!! This week we will learn about some scandals and controversies riled up during the era of the Harlem Renaissance. In the midst of all that art being created, lots of skeletons, lots of dirt!
To start we will just post this thread which gave me the idea for this week’s topic!
the invitation & the divorce announcement by du bois months later. pic.twitter.com/LpcGAE7oKW
— Dr. Frank Leon Roberts (@DrFrankRoberts) February 11, 2023
Yolande Du Bois was born on October 21, 1900 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, her father’s hometown, to W.E.B. and Nina (née Gomer) Du Bois. They had arrived there from Atlanta, Georgia, shortly after the death of their infant son Burghardt from diphtheria in 1899. When Yolande was growing up, she did not have a close relationship with her father. He was often away for his career, or living in a different city altogether for academic research and assignments. Yolande was often ill. A family physician diagnosed the girl as having “inadequate levels of lime” when she had poor health. Some biographers thought that Yolande faked these illnesses to gain her father’s attention. As a child, Yolande was defiant toward her parents. She was aggressive and passionate in nature. Her father described their relationship as one in which she held the power. To gain some control, her parents sent her to Bedales, a British boarding school. While dealing with racial discrimination, she graduated from Brooklyn’s Girls’ High School.
Du Bois began attending Fisk University in 1920. While in college, Yolande was in a loving romance with jazz musician Jimmie Lunceford. However, her father believed he was an unsuitable match. Defying her parents’ wishes, she continued to see Lunceford for some time. The relationship ended when she conceded to her father’s wish that she marry poet Countee Cullen, who had received early acclaim in his career.
Du Bois first met Countee Cullen in 1923, when they were both students in college, she at Fisk and he at New York University (NYU). She married him on April 9, 1928 at Salem Methodist Episcopal Church in Harlem, in a wedding officiated by his adoptive father, Frederick A. Cullen, a minister. Countee’s close friend, Harold Jackman had introduced the pair to each other, likely at the Jersey Shore where Countee’s parents had a house in Pleasantville. The young, dashing Jackman was a school teacher and, thanks to his noted beauty, a prominent figure among Harlem’s gay elite.
Oh, baby, they processed and fingerwaved that hair tf up! https://t.co/EO1pEdWH0y
— lemmesheeyoudoathweeshixshee (@chettykey_) February 13, 2023
With the approval of Yolande’s father, Countee proposed during the holiday season of 1927.
He and Du Bois spent the next couple of months planning the wedding with little contribution from Yolande. The April 9th wedding became the social event of the year, a highlight among the black elite. The public African-American press published every detail of the wedding, including the rail car used and the number of people in the wedding party. Du Bois pressured Countee to pick up the marriage certificate early to prevent any problems or delays; he acquired it four days before the ceremony. Some 1,200 people from Du Bois’ wide political and activist circle were invited to the wedding, but 3,000 people crowded into the church for the ceremony. Yolande had 16 bridesmaids and Cullen had 9 groomsmen. Jackman served as the best man.
After the wedding Yolande and Countee visited Philadelphia, Atlantic City, New Jersey, and Great Barrington, Massachusetts in a brief honeymoon. During the honeymoon, Yolande wrote to her father, saying that she was unsure about her marriage and her intimate relationship with her husband. Her father responded that she simply needed more experience. In June 1928 Countee, his father and Jackman traveled together to Paris, as Countee had received a Guggenheim Fellowship for study in Europe. Yolande joined him in August. By September 1928, her father was counseling Cullen on maintaining the marriage. After Cullen admitted to Yolande that he was attracted to men, she filed for divorce. Like the wedding, the divorce was negotiated between Cullen and Yolande’s father; it became final in Paris in the spring of 1930. (Countee married again in 1940 and stayed married until his death several years later.)
“Knock Me A Kiss” is a broadway play inspired by the true events of Countee Cullen and Yolanda DuBois’s ill-fated marriage. It was written by playwright Charles Smith. Here is a short intro to the play: