Claude McKay

He married his childhood sweetheart Eulalie Lewars in 1914. They had one daughter.

He died of a heart attack in 1948.

He was the youngest of the 11 children born to Thomas Francis McKay and Hannah Ann Elizabeth. His parents were farmers.

His oldest brother was a teacher and the young Claude was sent to live with him when he was seven. He loved to read books and devoured literature, philosophy, religion and science.

He met a mentor in Walter Jekyll in 1907 who encouraged the boy to write and develop his own literary style. He blossomed under his guide and began writing verses in Jamaican dialect. With Jekyll’s help he published his first book of poems, ‘Songs of Jamaica’ in 1912.

He moved to the U.S. in 1912 to attend Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute. There he encountered wide spread racism which motivated him to write more poetry. He did not like the place and shifted to Kansas State University.

He published two poems in 1917 under the pseudonym Eli Edwards. He became acquainted with Crystal and Max Eastman who published the socialist magazine ‘The Liberator’ in 1919.

He became a co-executive editor of ‘The Liberator’ and served in this post till 1922. America was plagued by rampant racial violence during the period which influenced him to produce the poem ‘If We Must Die’.

Angry with white authorities, he joined a group of black radicals who formed the semi-secret revolutionary organization, ‘African Blood Brotherhood’.

He went to London in 1919 where he became a member of the International Socialist Club. He also became inclined towards militancy and joined the Rationalist Press Association.

He was employed as a journalist by the socialist paper ‘Workers’ Dreadnought’. He was drawn towards communism and attended the Communist Unity Conference that established the Communist Party of Great Britain. He continued writing poetry throughout.

His debut novel, ‘Home to Harlem’ was his most famous work. It tells the story of a black soldier who leaves the U.S. Army in the midst of the World War I to return home to Harlem. His story is juxtaposed with that of Ray, a disillusioned Haitian immigrant.