We at Shmoop think that "Incident" is a pretty apt title for the poem at hand. Just upon reading the title, we have tons of questions: What's the incident? Where does it happen? Who did it involve? Even more importantly, there's an ominous feeling inherent to the word "incident" that we don't find in more neutral terms like "occurrence" or "situation," or even "moment." By titling his poem "Incident," Cullen at once draws our interest and clues us in that we're going to be dealing with some pretty heavy stuff.
And, in case you're wondering about that "(For Eric Walrond)" that's chilling under the title, here's the skinny: Eric Walrond was a pal of Cullen's. Like Cullen, Walrond was a writer of the Harlem Renaissance. He was best known for writing the book Tropic Death, and he too was an activist for African Americans, which makes him a pretty suitable dedicatee for "Incident."