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Waring Cuney (1906-1976): Author Page

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William Waring Cuney was born and raised in Washington, DC; his father was a government employee and his mother taught in DC public schools. Cuney attended Howard University for two years before transferring to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania.
(Some accounts indicate he graduate from Lincoln with a B.A., while others indicate he left without a degree to pursue studies in music at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston)

Cuney's poem "No Images" won him a prize in the 1926 Opportunity magazine poetry competition, while the author was still a student at Lincoln University. Cuney also became friends with Langston Hughes at Lincoln, and appeared with Hughes and Edward Silvera in Four Lincoln University Poets, a small anthology published by the university itself in 1930. 

Cuney continued to write poetry after the end of the first flowering of the Harlem Renaissance, and published two books of poetry later in life, Puzzles (1960; published in the Netherlands), and Storefront Church (London, 1973). 

A biographical note from Gay Pitman Zieger on EBSCOhost also has this about Cuney's work during the 1930s: 

In the 1930’s, Cuney was a researcher for the federal government’s Works Progress Administration (later known as the Works Projects Administration, WPA) as part of its Federal Writers’ Project (FWP) documenting New York City’s black history. During World War II, he served in the United States Army, winning the Asiatic Pacific Theater Ribbon and three Bronze Stars.

In 1942, he collaborated with famed gospel, blues, and folk singer Josh White in the latter’s well-received album, Southern Exposure. White worked Cuney’s lyrics into his own vocal arrangements, and together they produced one of the earliest collections of protest songs, exposing the abuse of power by labor bosses, segregation in the defense industry, and discrimination against blacks in the military. Ironically, Cuney was still in the Army when White was called upon to entertain President Franklin D. Roosevelt with selections from the album. (source)


In 1942, Cuney enlisted in the Army and served in the 857th Engineer Aviation Battalion during World War II. He was mainly stationed in the Asian theater, where biographers indicate he helped to build runways for military aircraft; as was mentioned above, he received three Bronze Stars for his service. Cuney never married, though biographers suggest he may have had a relationship with a nurse from Wisconsin named Adeline Norris.

See a detailed biographical profile of Cuney at the Texas Monthly here. 

A more detailed biography of Cuney is available in a new collection by Cynthia Davis and Verner D. Mitchell, called Images in the River: The Life and Work of Waring Cuney (Texas Tech University Press, 2024). The new collection also contains more than 100 poems by Cuney, including writings from later in life. More about that book here.

Contents of this path:

  1. Waring Cuney, Biographical Note in "Caroling Dusk" (1927)
  2. Waring Cuney, "The Death Bed" (1926)
  3. Waring Cuney, "Grave" (1926)
  4. Waring Cuney, "No Images" (1927)
  5. Waring Cuney, "A Triviality" (1927)
  6. Waring Cuney, "The Radical" (1927)
  7. Waring Cuney, "True Love" (1927)
  8. Waring Cuney, "I Think I See Him There" (1927)
  9. Waring Cuney, "Dust" (1927)
  10. Waring Cuney, "Interior Decoration" (1927)
  11. Waring Cuney, "Aint Nobody But You" (1928)
  12. Waring Cuney, "Da Jail Blues Song" (1928)
  13. Waring Cuney, "Hammer Song" (1928)
  14. Waring Cuney, "Jes Moochin' Along" 1928)
  15. Waring Cuney, "Murder Blues" (1928)
  16. Waring Cuney, "Old Man Death" (1928)
  17. Waring Cuney, "Once Bad Gal" (1928)
  18. Waring Cuney, "Pick Song" (1928)
  19. Waring Cuney, "Suicide" (1928)
  20. Waring Cuney, "Play a Blues for Louise" (1929)
  21. Waring Cuney, "On With the Dirge" (1929)
  22. Waring Cuney, "Nude Walker" (1929)
  23. Waring Cuney, "Railway Club" (1929)
  24. Waring Cuney, "Jazz Band" (1929)
  25. Waring Cuney, "Threnody" (1928)
  26. Waring Cuney, "Forgetting" (1928)
  27. Waring Cuney, "Finis" (1928)
  28. Waring Cuney, "Crucifixion" (1928)

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  1. HBCU: Historically Black Colleges and Universities Amardeep Singh