Claude+McKay

Claude McKay

Jardai and La'Ara, grade 6

Claude McKay was a poet, a novelist, an essayist and a journalist. He made famous poems like "If We Must Die". It was a statement about racism. He traveled all around changing lives.

Claude McKay was born on September 15, 1890, in a little town called Sunnyville, in Jamaica. Claude was the youngest of eleven children. His father was Thomas Francis McKay, and his mother was Hannah Ann Elizabeth Edwards. Jamaica was still under Britain's control. McKay grew up with the influence of British culture.

Claude McKay started writing poetry at the age of ten. In 1919 he published two sonnets called "The Harlem Dancer" and "Invocation." During the Harlem Renaissance Claude McKay started writing poems about what goes on with Blacks and whites and how statements can affect the way we live.

During the 1920's, Claude traveled to Russia and then France, where he met Edna St. Vincent Millay and Sinclair Lewis. In 1934 Claude McKay moved back to the United States. In 1948 he died at the age of fifty eight.

Claude McKay left a legacy of poetry to many of the poets who came after him, like Langston Hughes. Like other poets of the Harlem Renaissance, he helped change segregation to balance.