CLAUDE McKAY
Poet, novelist, and journalist, Festus Claudius McKay was born in Sunny Ville, Clarendon Parish, Jamaica, on September 15, 1889. As a young child, Claude McKay received a background in both classical and British literature and philosophy. Before too long he began to write poems in traditional forms. He read widely, including works of science and literature. In 1907 McKay came to the attention of Walter Jekyll, an English gentleman residing in Jamaica who became his mentor, encouraging him to write dialect verse. Jekyll later set some of McKay’s verse to music. Before going to the U.S. in 1912, he wrote two volumes of Jamaican dialect verse, "Songs of Jamaica" and "Constab Ballads" (1912).
Claude McKay moved from his native Jamaica to the United States to study agriculture, but instead, cultivated a passion for poetry, he was 23 years old. Having heard favorable reports of the work of Booker T. Washington, McKay enrolled at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. He soon left Tuskegee Institute (1912) for Kansas State Teachers College in Manhattan, Kansas. At Kansas State, he read W.E.B Du Bois' The Souls of Black Folk, which had a major impact on him and stirred his political involvement. In 1914 a financial gift from Jekyll enabled him to move to the Harlem district of New York City, where he contributed regularly to "The Liberator", then a leading journal of avant-garde politics and art.
McKay published two poems in 1917 in The Seven Arts under the pseudonym Eli Edwards. During the period of racial violence against Blacks known as the Red Summer of 1919, McKay wrote one of his best-known poems, the sonnet, "If We Must Die," which contributed to the Harlem Renaissance. "If We Must Die," which threatened retaliation for racial prejudice and abuse quickly became McKay's best-known piece of work. “Baptism,” “The White House,” and “The Lynching,” all sonnets, also exemplify some of McKay’s finest protest poetry. The generation of poets who formed the core of the Harlem Renaissance, including Langston Hughes and Countée Cullen, identified McKay as a leading inspirational force.
It was in 1919 that McKay traveled to London and began two years of European travel. There, he spent a lot of time at the International Club. While in England, he was employed by the British socialist Sylvia Pankhurst’s journal, "The Workers’ Drednought". McKay then published a book of verse, "Spring in New Hampshire", which was released in an expanded version in the United States in 1922. With the publication of two volumes of poetry, "Spring in New Hampshire" (1920) and "Harlem Shadows" (1922), McKay emerged as the first and most militant voice of the Harlem Renaissance.
McKay returned to the United States in 1921 and involved himself in various social and political causes. McKay joined the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). He worked with Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and continued to explore Communism. He even traveled to the Soviet Union to attend the Communist Party's Fourth Congress. After spending some time in the United States, McKay again left the country, spending what would prove to be twelve extremely productive years in Europe, the Soviet Union, and North Africa, a period marked by poverty and illness. While in the Soviet Union he compiled his journalistic essays into a book, "The Negroes in America".
McKay had moved to Morocco in 1930, but his financial situation forced him to return to the United States in 1934. Returning to Harlem, McKay began work on an autobiography entitled "A Long Way from Home", which focuses on his experiences as an oppressed minority and agitates for a broad movement against colonialism and segregation. The book has been criticized for its less-than-candid treatment of some of McKay's more controversial interests and beliefs. His consistent denial of having joined the Communist Party, despite multiple trips to the Soviet Union, is a point of particular contention.
"Home to Harlem" is McKay’s most famous and most controversial book. "Home to Harlem" was an exploration of Black culture, which was critically acclaimed but engendered controversy for its frank portrayal of the underside of Harlem life. His depiction of the lives of Harlem inhabitants was not out of disrespect but in fact a close affection to the place. Written during an era where Black writers often pandered to the stereotypes of the primitive exotic, "Home to Harlem" pulsates with controversial stereotypes: cabaret scenes, boozers, jazzers, and dancers.
While the novel was a financial success, it met mixed reviews. While Langston Hughes and other Renaissance writers praised the work, W.E.B. DuBois found little merit in the volume. In his review for Crisis, the official publication of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Dr. DuBois wrote a scathing review. He said "Home to Harlem... for the most part nauseates me, and after the dirtier parts of its filth I feel distinctly like taking a bath", after reading the novel. It was a best-seller that won the Harmon Gold Award for Literature.
His next novel, "Banjo: A Story without a Plot" (1929), followed the exploits of an expatriate African-American musician in Marseilles. Banjo did not sell well. Neither did "Gingertown" (1932), a short story collection, or "Banana Bottom" (1933). Critics agree that "Banana Bottom" is McKay’s most skillful delineation of the Black individual’s predicament. He would later write two autobiographical volumes and a nonfiction study, "Harlem: Negro Metropolis"(1940) , which gained little attention but has remained an important historical source. Never able to regain the stature he had achieved during the 1920s, McKay blamed his chronic financial difficulties on his race and his failure to obtain academic credentials and associations.
McKay never returned to the homeland he left in 1912. His became a U.S. citizen in 1940. Losing faith in Communism, he turned his attention to the teachings of various spiritual and political leaders in Harlem. Four years later he eventually converting to Catholicism, associating himself with the progressive wing of Catholic activism. Although he became disenchanted with Soviet communism, he remained committed to international socialism. His final poems still carry the force of the work he had done decades earlier. His second autobiography, My Green Hills of Jamaica, was published posthumously in 1979.