Frank Horne was a Harlem Renaissance poet and a member of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s (FDR) “Black Cabinet.” Throughout his public career, including his years with the U.S. Housing Authority, Horne was an outspoken opponent of racial segregation in public and private housing. Horne was born in Brooklyn, New York on August 18, 1899 to Edwin and Cora Horne, prominent members of middle class black New York and the early members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).  Horne graduated from City College of New York in 1921 and received a doctor of optometry degree from Northern Illinois College of Ophthalmology and Otology in 1923.  Horne returned to New York and opened a practice in Harlem as an eye doctor. In 1925, Horne received second place in the Amy Spingarn Literary Award contest for his “Letters Found Near a Suicide.”  The poem was published in the NAACP’s Crisis magazine and later included in Alain Locke’s New Negro anthology of the Harlem Renaissance.  Other Horne poems would be collected in the anthology Haverstraw, which appeared in 1963.  Horne also wrote reviews for the Urban League’s Opportunity magazine. In 1927, Frank Horne went to Georgia to become the … Continue reading Frank Smith Horne (1899-1974)