1. Claude McKay
Born in Jamaica September 15, 1890 and died May 22,
1948
He began writing poetry as a schoolboy.
He worked as a policeman in Spanish Town and when he
was twenty-two had his first volume of poems, Songs of
Jamaica published in 1912.
His work is associated with the Harlem Renaissance,
but he was often in conflict with the writers of that
movement because of his political views.
2. In 1912 McKay moved to the United States where he
attended Tuskegee Institute in Alabama and Kansas State
University. He continued to write his poetry throughout
1918 and the following year, his poem, ”If We Must
Die”, was published in Eastman's journal, The Liberator.
3. In 1922 McKay went to Third International in Moscow
where he represented the American Workers Party. He
stayed in Europe where he wrote Trial by Lynching:
Stories About Negro Life in America (1925) and Home
to Harlem (1928), a novel about a disillusioned black
soldier in the US Army who returns from the Western
Front to live in a black ghetto. McKay returned to the
United States in 1934.
McKay’s work focuses on the working class
4. McKay never returned to Jamaica. He became a U.S.
citizen in 1940. High blood pressure and heart disease
continued to plague him and in 1948 he eventually
succumbed to congestive heart failure
5. The Harlem Renaissance
a period in the 1920s when African-American
achievements in art and music and literature
flourished
a renewal and flourishing of black literary and musical
culture during the years after World War I in
the Harlem section of New York City.
