Claude McKay

1890–1948

1 standalone book

Claude McKay was a Jamaican-American writer and poet who played a central role in the Harlem Renaissance. Born in Jamaica, he traveled to the United States to attend college, where he encountered W.E.B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk, which inspired his engagement with political issues. He moved to New York City in 1914 and wrote "If We Must Die" in 1919, a notable sonnet addressing the racial violence that followed the First World War.

Born

1890