Claude McKay

Biography

Claude McKay (1889–1948) was a Jamaican-American poet, novelist, and essayist whose work helped define the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Born Festus Claudius McKay on September 15, 1889, in Sunny Ville, Clarendon Parish, Jamaica, he developed an early interest in literature under the influence of his older brother, a schoolteacher, and a British neighbor who introduced him to English poetry and agnostic philosophy. McKay emigrated to the United States in 1912, studying agriculture briefly at Tuskegee Institute and Kansas State University before moving to New York City. There he immersed himself in radical politics and literary circles, becoming associated with the socialist magazine The Liberator. His 1922 poetry collection Harlem Shadows is widely regarded as one of the first major works of the Harlem Renaissance, combining traditional sonnet forms with themes of racial protest, displacement, and longing. His novel Home to Harlem (1928) became a bestseller and sparked controversy for its frank depiction of Black working-class life in New York. It was followed by Banjo (1929), set among Black expatriates in Marseille, and Banana Bottom (1933), a novel set in Jamaica exploring the tension between Western education and indigenous culture. His autobiography A Long Way from Home (1937) and the sociological study Harlem: Negro Metropolis (1940) rounded out his prose output. McKay's poetry is characterized by its use of the Petrarchan sonnet form to articulate Black resistance and dignity. His poem "If We Must Die" (1919), written in response to racial violence during the Red Summer, gained international recognition and was later cited by Winston Churchill during World War II without attribution. McKay spent years in Europe, the Soviet Union, and North Africa before returning to the United States in 1934. He converted to Roman Catholicism in 1944 and died on May 22, 1948, in Chicago.