Claude McKay, writer, poet, and political activist

The Harlem Renaissance writers had skill and audacity, and they were committed to writing transcendent work to show history and community. Similarly, their works were politically-minded and spoke to a generation of marginalized Americans. In this post, we examine Claude McKay, a writer who wrote from his moral center.

Biography

Claude McKay was born Festus Claudius McKay on Sept. 15, 1889, in Clarendon Parish, Jamaica. As a youth, McKay was instantly attracted to British poetry even though his parents had utmost pride in their Malagasy and Ashanti Heritage. McKay would blend both cultures together to form a strong writing voice with the help of a few friends:

“Under the tutelage of his brother, schoolteacher Uriah Thephilus McKay, and a neighboring Englishman, Walter Jekyll, McKay studied the British masters, including John Milton, Alexander Pope, and the later Romantics—and European philosophers …” (poetryfoundation.org)

McKay’s Writing Life

With education under his belt, McKay explored other aspects of culture and civilization. He wrote about the life of poorer Jamaicans and explored inequality. In 1912, McKay published Songs of Jamaica and Constab Ballads under a London publisher. Afterward, he moved to the US to study at the Tuskegee Institute and Kansas State College. He remained at the institute for a few short months.

Two years later, in 1914, he moved to Harlem, New York. In 1917, McKay published more poems in Pearson’s Magazine and Liberator, which featured his poem “If We Must Die.” The poem details the lengths that people should strive in order to see themselves vindicated in the eyes of the establishment.

Here’s the poem in its entirety:

If we must die, let it not be like hogs

Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,

While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,

Making their mock at our accursed lot.

If we must die, O let us nobly die,

So that our precious blood may not be shed

In vain; then even the monsters we defy

Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!

O kinsmen! We must meet the common foe!

Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,

And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!

What though before us lies the open grave?

Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,

Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

“If We Must Die” by Claude McKay

Political Activism

McKay would leave the US for a few years and publish Spring in New Hampshire in 1920 during his European travels. After returning to the US, McKay began his journey into political activism. He involved himself with communists and the Universal Negro Improvement Association. He would leave the US again to travel to Europe and North Africa, where he stayed for over 10 years, publishing a few notable works, including Home to Harlem and Banjo.

While he had dabbled in communism, he later began to dismiss the idea. After he returned to the US once more, he started engaging in more spiritual pursuits with the theologians in Harlem. Eventually, he converted to Catholicism, and toward the end of his life, he worked as an educator for a Catholic organization.

He died of a heart attack in Chicago on May 22, 1948.

Conclusion

Due to his monumental literary and political pursuits in life, he left a lasting impression.

“McKay’s viewpoints and poetic achievements in the earlier part of the twentieth century set the tone for the Harlem Renaissance and gained the deep respect of younger black poets of the time, including Langston Hughes.”

Poets.org

Notable Works

• Songs of Jamaica
• Constab Ballads
• Spring in New Hampshire, and Other Poems
• Harlem: Negro Metropollis