African American Poetry (1870-1928): A Digital Anthology

Frank Horne, Biographical Note in "Caroling Dusk" (1927)

BORN in New York City, August 18, 1899, I have lived all but about six years in Brooklyn. I studied at the College of the City of New York, and was guilty there of my first sonnet; but am ever so much more proud of my varsity letters won on the track_once ran a “10 flat” hundred and a 51 sec. quarter. Went to the Northern Illinois College of Ophthalmology-took degree “Doctor of Optometry.”

Have practiced in Chicago and New York. At present writing, am doing some teaching and publicity work at the Fort Valley High and Industrial School, Georgia, while recovering from a mean illness. Have had a hankering to write as long as I can remember, but Charles Johnson, Editor of Opportunity and a certain Gwendolyn Bennett are responsible for my trying it openly. My "published works” are limited to the indulgence of Opportunity, The Crisis, and Braithwaite's Anthology. It is the perver- sity of my nature to crave the ability to write good prose,
and yet my attempts at poetry are the only things to which any notice is given.”

Published in Caroling Dusk, 1927