Illustration from The Black Christ and Other Poems, by Countee Cullen with decorations by Charles Cullen. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1929.

Illustration from The Black Christ and Other Poems, by Countee Cullen with decorations by Charles Cullen. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1929.

Cullen, poet of the Harlem Renaissance, wrote The Black Christ as an epic poem about the lynching of a young black man for a crime he did not commit. The poem contemplates the value and purpose of faith in a god who abides the suffering of African Americans, while dramatizing the kinship between Christ's suffering and that of African Americans in a racist society.