Reviewers in The Nationechoed Gorman’s lead,
noting that “Best of all [Cullen] can forget that he
is of the colored race and be just ‘poet’ most of the
time” (Ferguson, 92). Alain Locke, however,
phrased it more deliberately in the January 1926
response that he published in Opportunity.“Ladies
and gentlemen,” he proclaimed, “A genius! Poster-
ity will laugh at us if we do not proclaim [Cullen]
now” (Lomax, 240). It is clear, though, that Cullen
never forgot his racial identity nor divorced him-
self from the racially insistent nature of the Harlem
Renaissance in which he came of age.
Bibliography
Countee Cullen Papers, Amistad Research Center, Dil-
lard University.
Ferguson, Blanche. Countee Cullen and the Negro Renais-
sance.New York: Dodd, Mead, 1966.
Lomax, Michael. “Countee Cullen: A Key to the Puz-
zle.” In Harlem Renaissance Re-Examined: A Revised
and Expanded Edition,edited by Victor Kramer and
Robert Russ. Troy, N.Y.: Whitson, 1997. 239–247.
Shucard, Alan. Countee Cullen.Boston: Twayne, 1984.
“Cordelia the Crude”Wallace Thurman
(1926)
A memorable short story by WALLACETHURMAN
that appeared in the November 1926 debut issue
of FIRE!!The story, told from the perspective of an
unwitting first-person narrator, traces the devolu-
tion and inadvertent moral corruption of a 16-
year-old girl who ultimately becomes a prostitute
in NEWYORKCITY.
Cordelia is the rebellious daughter of parents
who “decided to be lured to New York by an older
son who had remained there after the demobiliza-
tion of the war time troops.” She is an especially
assertive 16-year-old, “matronly mature” and “an
undisciplined, half-literate product of rustic South
Carolina.” Once in New York, she refuses to at-
tend school or to seek employment and thoroughly
undermines her parents’s efforts to ease her transi-
tion into urban life. Her resistance ultimately
means that her mother, who has five other chil-
dren at home, has to seek day work.
Cordelia develops a reputation as a “fus’ class
chippie” after she begins spending time at the Roo-
sevelt Motion Picture Theatre that is located on
145th Street and Seventh Avenue, near her home.
She has become adept at entertaining and rebuff-
ing the advances of male theater patrons. Those
whom she likes are able to sit with her during the
show, cuddle, and make plans for “an after-theater
rendezvous.” When the unnamed narrator meets
her, he is encouraged by her response. “[S]he no-
ticed my pursuit,” he recalls, “and thinking that I
was eager to play the game, let me know immedi-
ately that she was wise, and not the least bit averse
to spooning with me during the evening’s perfor-
mance.” While he delights in the company and
“played up to her with all the fervor, or so [he]
thought, of an old timer,” he fails to take physical
advantage of her. After the show, the innocent
narrator walks her home. They kiss on the stair
landings as they make their way to her apartment,
and when they reach the front door, the narrator
gives her two dollars. She stares at him “foolishly,”
as if unsure of the transaction. Six months later,
when he encounters her at a party, he is somewhat
taken aback by the sight of Cordelia “savagely ca-
reening in a drunken abortion of the Charlestown
and surrounded by a perspiring circle of handclap-
ping enthusiasts.” When he pursues her afterward,
he hears her describe him to a group of girls as
“The guy who gimme ma’ firs’ two bucks.”
The story provides a vivid image of social life
among young people in Harlem even as it explores
the more sobering issues of prostitution and wan-
ton behavior. The narrator appears to send a young
girl, whom he has described as “physically, if not
mentally... a potential prostitute,” toward an un-
fortunate life. Thus, Thurman suggests that all can
be complicit in social degradation and that inno-
cence can exist on both sides of the moral line.
“Cordelia the Crude” is part of the rich collec-
tion of Harlem Renaissance writings about
African-American migration and life in the urban
North. The startling conclusion also counters the
stereotypical image of inevitable sexual depravity.Bibliography
Perkins, Huel. “Renaissance ‘Renegade’: Wallace Thur-
man,” Black World25, no. 4 (1976): 29–35.
Singh, Amritjit, and Daniel Scott, eds. The Collected
Writings of Wallace Thurman: A Harlem Renaissance
Reader.New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University
Press, 2003.98 “Cordelia the Crude”