dean and acting president of the school. In 1935,
Horne became an administrative officer in the Na-
tional Youth Administration and its division on
Negro Affairs. He was active in housing administra-
tion offices in Washington, D.C., and in New York
City. With MARYMCLEODBETHUNE, president of
BETHUNE-COOKMANCOLLEGE, and others, Horne
was a valuable and often-consulted member of the
Black Cabinet. This group, whose formation was
proposed by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, was
made up of accomplished African-American lead-
ers who offered to President Roosevelt their evalua-
tions of pressing current national issues.
Horne married Frankye Priestly Bunn in Au-
gust 1930. The couple lived in the Crown Heights
area of Brooklyn, a neighborhood of many African-
American professionals and activists. He married
his second wife, Mercedes Rector of Washington,
D.C., in 1950. He was a member of Omega Psi Phi,
the NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE, and the NA-
TIONALASSOCIATION FOR THEADVANCEMENT
OFCOLOREDPEOPLE.
Horne emerged as a poet while he was im-
mersed in public life as an administrator and educa-
tor. Like RUDOLPHFISHER, a pioneering physician
and scientist in X-ray technology, Horne merged his
professional and writing lives. In 1925 his poem
“Letters Found Near a Suicide” earned second
prize in the Amy Spingarn Contest sponsored by
THE CRISIS. During the Harlem Renaissance,
Horne published in The Crisis, Opportunity, and
WILLIAMSTANLEYBRAITHWAITE’s annual poetry
anthologies.
Horne’s poetry often invoked painful religious
themes relating to the life of Jesus Christ. Works like
“On Seeing Two Brown Boys in a Catholic Church”
forecast the trials that people of color inevitably
faced. The poem, published in the December 1925
issue of Opportunity,begins with an ominous state-
ment. “’Tis fitting that you be here, / Little brown
boys / With Christ-like eyes / And curling hair,”
muses the narrator. He then goes on to make dis-
turbing predictions about the looming trials that the
boys will face. He suggests that the innocent boys
study the crucifix hanging in the church, since they
too “shall know this thing.” In this world, African
Americans “shall know Hell, will suffer under Pon-
tius Pilate” and “feel the rugged cut of rough hewn
cross / Upon... surging shoulder.”
Horne’s poems also explore visceral emotional
trauma brought on by difficult relationships and
overwhelming melancholy. “To a Persistent Phan-
tom,” published first in Opportunity, revealed a
speaker tortured by his inability to suppress the
memory of a former love. “I buried you deeper last
night,” he says, but he soon has obsessive awareness
of his sweetheart’s charms. “I buried you deeper last
night / With fuller breasts / And stronger arms /
With softer lips / And newer charms / I buried you
deeper last night.” The speaker endows the object of
his attention with greater physical and emotional
strength. By poem’s end, the battle between the
mourner and the mourned is raging intensely.
“[T]hat gay spirit / That once was you / Will tear its
soul / In climbing through / Deeper... aye, deeper /
I buried you deeper last night.” The lack of resolu-
tion in this affair suggests the speaker’s haunting
powerlessness even as it demonstrates his purposeful
engagement with the past.
Horne’s most well-known poem, “Letters
Found Near a Suicide” is a lengthy and tortured
narrative comprising 11 letters that one person
writes to important people in his life. The poem be-
gins with a note entitled “To All of You” that sug-
gests the disturbing ease with which the deceased
has slipped away. “My little stone / Sinks quickly /
Into the bosom of this deep, dark pool / Of obliv-
ion,” he writes. Clearly determined to overcome
anonymity in death, the writer notes satisfyingly
that “those far shores / That knew me not / Will feel
the fleeting, furtive kiss / Of my tiny concentric rip-
ples.” The speaker then delivers a series of notes to
friends, family, lost lovers, and others with whom he
has commiserated about the tragedies of love and
life. A tone of indictment emerges in the note “To
Telie,” about a person who “made my voice / A rip-
pling laugh / But my heart / A crying thing.” In the
longest note to a male friend with the nickname
“Chick,” the speaker revels in memories of “far
flung days of abandon” and transforms his suicide
into an act of athletic triumph. He chronicles the
closeness of their friendship, a bond that prompted
others to call them “The Terrible Two.” The speaker
celebrates their triumphs on the playing fields and
his ability to “slip through / Fighting and squirming /
Over the line / To victory. / You remember
Chick?.. .” This note closes on a plaintive note as
the speaker implores his chum to remember their248 Horne, Frank S.