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Claude McKay, writer, poet, and political activist

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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
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Voices of Change: The Harlem Renaissance

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It is hard to imagine the pain and sorrow a marginalized group of Americans must have felt emerging from the slavery of the South. Their palatable hope of Northern emancipation dissolved into similar racism and ostracism, too. But, from the ashes the phoenix does rise. In this post, we are going to talk about an important artistic movement known as The Harlem Renaissance. This movement pushed Black voices into the spotlight, and highlighted their artistic endeavors, from music to writing.

The Catalyst of a Cultural Movement and Renaissance

The Jim Crow laws of the post-Civil War American South did damage to Black Americans mentally and physically. These laws were the “system of segregation and discrimination in the South” by “legal segregation” (National Geographic). For example, these types of laws kept Black from eating in the same restaurants. They also could not drink from the same drinking fountains, going to the same theaters as whites. Likewise, exclusion can have the adverse effect of keeping people from feeling human.

It would stand to reason then, that many Blacks wanted to find a way out of the South.

As sources state, the disparity between Blacks and Whites in the South caused a turbulent rift to grow larger. The poison in the veins of these trodden Americans “led many African Americans to hope for a new life up north.” As Black Americans hid and dodged “hate groups” and “hate crimes” in the Deep South, they wondered about the “promise of owning land.” This promise never “materialized” (US History).

As it relates to our topic, the Harlem Renaissance grew out of Black Americans moving North. Here, they doubled-down on their cultures and histories in the segregated communities they were relegated to toil. Similarly, such innovation in the arts matched marginalized groups in the past. This includes the Native Americans who fought to maintain their own languages against the aggressions of European integration.

What was the Harlem Renaissance?

The Harlem Renaissance was a period between 1910 and the mid-1930s. The movement saw a large amount of Black Americans generating art from Harlem in New York City.

History states that “ … this period is considered a golden age in African American culture, manifesting in literature, music, stage performance and art.” The convergence of Black Americans on the Harlem area stemmed from The Great Migration from the South to the North. The migration was spurred by the aforementioned Jim Crow laws that actively worked to undermine Black power.

Other factors that led to this migration included, “natural disasters.” Likewise, little immigration to the United States and recruitment from Northern companies led to Black Americans heading North.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes, Harlem Renaissance author, wrote a great deal about the Black experience. Biography states, “Hughes broke new ground in poetry when he began to write verse that incorporated how Black people talked and the jazz and blues music they played. He led the way in harnessing the blues form in poetry with ‘The Weary Blues,’ which was written in 1923 and appeared in his 1926 collection The Weary Blues.”


The Major Players in the Renaissance?

The Harlem Renaissance would see the likes of W. E. B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and Jean Toomer emerge as powerful writing voices. McKay would produce a collection of poems titled Harlem Shadows in 1922, which was a breakthrough for Black writers. He would go on to write more prominent works, such as the poem “America” and “If We Must Die.”

Countee Cullen, who had published volumes of poetry including Color, Copper Sun, and The Ballad of the Brown Girl, innovated in the Harlem happenings. He married W.E.B. DuBois’ daughter Nina Yolande. The public saw their marraige as a “major social event in Harlem.” It “marked the joining of the Cullen and Du Bois lineages, two of its most notable families” (Poetry Foundation).

Furthermore authors like Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison would contribute defining pieces of literature regarding the identify of Black Americans.

Conclusion

While this is a small picture of the Harlem Renaissance, it is important to recognize its lasting legacy on writing (and other art forms). Due to the large volume and publication of many important voices in Black literature, this movement gave levity and authority to Black culture. It also staked a claim for Black literature, poetry, music, and art, and showed white Americans that there was more than one voice in the country.