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"The demon of poets had got hold of me. I became a vagabond-- but a vagabond with a purpose. I was determined to find expression in writing." --Claude McKay
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Claude McKay 1892 - 1982 |
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| Festus
Claudius McKay was born on September 15, 1889, in Sunny Ville, Jamacia.
His childhood was pleasant in the Jamacian mountains, and he was afforded
a well-rounded education. At four he attended school at Mt. Zion Church
where an interest in history manifested itself. Additional education that
included classical literature, socialist views, and natural science and
evolution were the responsibility of McKay’s free-thinking, lay preacher
brother. He read Shakespeare, Dickens, and Huxley, and began to write. By
age twenty-three McKay had completed two volumes of poetry in the native
Jamacian dialect. In 1912 McKay left for the United States planning to
study agronomy at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, but stayed only
briefly before leaving to attend Kansas State College. After two years
there McKay traveled to Harlem in New York where he joined the Negro
Renaissance writers’ revolt. In 1919, after reading detailed news accounts
of lynchings of African-Americans in America, McKay wrote his first major
political poems. Seven were published in The Liberator
(successor to The Masses), the most powerful being, "If We Must
Die."
McKay’s poetic voice captured the attention of the State Department, and so when he received the chance to travel to Europe in late 1919, he took advantage of it, returning to New York in 1921. That was when Max Eastman offered McKay the position of paid associate editor of The Liberator. However, when McKay wanted to increase the publication’s attention to African-American issues, even Eastman, McKay’s close friend and mentor, rejected the idea. In the spring of 1922, McKay published his first American book, Harlem Shadows, a work of seventy poems. It was the turning point in his literary career. Despite the success of his book, McKay, still troubled by disputes at The Liberator regarding race and political ideology, left America again. His travels over the next twelve years would take him to England, Berlin, and finally the Soviet Union. After six months in the Soviet Union, McKay traveled to Paris and finally on to the coastal town of Marseilles. All this time he was writing, not only poetry, but short stories as well. He expanded one of these into the novel, Home to Harlem. It appeared in 1928 as a landmark black novel, but not without criticism from black intellectuals such as W. E. B. Du Bois. In late 1928 McKay moved on to Morocco where he completed his second novel, Banjo, published in 1929. The next four years found him Germany, Spain, and North Africa. Finally he decided to return to the United States in 1934. The Depression was on; the Harlem Renaissance was in decline; so was Claude McKay. In 1936 he published his autobiography, A Long Way from Home, and in 1940 his last book, Harlem: Negro Metropolis. As his health failed McKay moved to Chicago converting to Catholicism. In the Catholic Church he found physical and spiritual shelter. He died of congestive heart failure in 1948. Sources used: Cohassey, John. "Claude McKay," Contemporary Black Biography (1994 ed.), VI, 183-187. "McKay," Encyclopedia of Literature (1995 ed.), 744-745. Watson, Steve. The Harlem Renaissance. New York: Pantheon Books, 1995.
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