Claude McKay: the Poet, the Activist, and the Artist
After the end of World War I, when many Americans were flourishing from terrific economic conditions, a new movement of art and culture bloomed out of Harlem, New York City. Its name was the Harlem Renaissance. This renaissance completely revolutionized African American art, culture, and intellect. Plenty of Negro works were distributed, catching the admiration of many white Americans. Harlem’s legacy still influences others around the world today. Writers were perhaps the most recognized artists of Harlem Renaissance. The works of Harlem’s literary figures, such as Langston Hughes (who wrote Not Without Laughter and the poem “Mother to Son”) and Countee Cullen (who wrote “Fruit of the Flower” and “From the Dark Tower”), are taught to students today. Among these great writers is Claude McKay, a Caribbean-American poet born in Jamaica. He was a seminal figure of the Harlem Renaissance, an individual who later influenced many others in the movement. McKay’s emphasis on Black Pride and his battle against racism emerges in his poetry, making him one of the most important people in the Harlem Renaissance.
McKay’s motivations in his work cannot be fully understood without awareness about his experiences as an immigrant to the USA.
Claude McKay was born in Clarendon Parish, Jamaica, on September 15, 1889. He was documented to have a happy childhood, almost free of racism. McKay’s life in Jamaica shaped many of his views on other places of the world. His homeland’s weather was warm and desirable, and he was never discriminated against, in fact, he was celebrated as a young poet, and it was rumored that the King of England read his first book. McKay was educated with the best resources available, and was mentored by a highly educated man of letters, a Mr. Jekyll. Thus, he became an avid reader of English literature, philosophy, science, etc. He began writing poetry at a very young age, and he published Songs of Jamaica, a book of dialect poetry, in 1912. The following is an excerpt from “My Native Land, My Home” from Songs of Jamaica:
Dere is no land dat can compare
Wid you where’er I roam;
In all de wul’ none like you fair,
My native land, my home.
McKay would reminisce about his life in Jamaica for decades after he left it. He wrote “The Tropics in New York” when he was especially missing home:
Bananas ripe and green, and ginger-root,
Cocoa in pods and alligator pears,
And tangerines and mangoes and grape fruit,
Fit for the highest prize at parish fairs,
Set in the window, bringing memories
Of fruit-trees laden by low-singing rills,
And dewy dawns, and mystical blue skies
In benediction over nun-like hills.
My eyes grew dim, and I could no more gaze;
A wave of longing through my body swept,
And, hungry for the old, familiar ways,
I turned aside and bowed my head and wept.
Shortly after publishing Songs of Jamaica, McKay traveled to the United States to study agriculture. When he touched American soil for the first time, he was shocked at the racism that existed in the country. His life in his homeland was not governed by racism, so he was naturally surprised and angered at the treatment of blacks in the supposedly-free nation. He may not have become such an important figure in black history had he been raised and taught to accept these social standards in America. He was not used to being grouped by the standards of the average black American, and he certainly did not come to the country just to be integrated into what society believed he should be, based on his race. McKay upheld an ideal for a free society, acting as one of the many pillars essential for its balance. An incident that especially angered him was the issue of labor unions. McKay worked as a Pullman Porter in his early American years. He was one of many black railcar waiters who were forbidden to form a labor union because their race. McKay expressed his disappointment in “Alfonso, Dressing to Wait at Table,” a poem about one of McKay’s colleagues:
Alfonso is a handsome bronze-hued lad
Of subtly-changing and surprising parts;
His moods are storms that frighten and make glad,
His eyes were made to capture women’s hearts.
Down in the glory-hole Alfonso sings
An olden song of wine and clinking glasses
And riotous rakes; magnificently flings
Gay kisses to imaginary lasses.
Alfonso’s voice of mellow music thrills
Our swaying forms and steals our hearts with joy;
And when he soars, his fine falsetto trills
Are rarest notes of gold without alloy.
But, O Alfonso! wherefore do you sing
Dream-songs of carefree men and ancient places?
Soon we shall be beset by clamouring
Of hungry and importunate palefaces.
Before the Harlem Renaissance, there was the Reconstruction Era of the United States. This period is just as crucial in African-American history. In the years following the Civil War, blacks were still treated harshly and heavily discriminated against. Many whites did not see them as equals. Recovering from a war, the United States barely had time to care for former slaves. From this movement rose figures such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, and George Washington Carver. These advocates for the advancement of the Negro had different ideals than McKay and later revolutionists. These three men were known to have added great steps in the ladder for black opportunity. They wanted to give the newly-freed slaves a shove towards the right direction; they tried to emphasize the importance of African American workers. Washington believed that blacks would eventually prove to be significant in America’s eyes as they progressed. Du Bois thought that Negros must insist upon their human rights. When most of this was achieved, the next generation brought McKay and more radical thinkers into history. During and after the Reconstruction, a movement known as the Great Migration occurred in the United States when millions of African Americans traveled from the South to urban areas. The Great Migration played an important role in the rise of the Harlem Renaissance; due to the movement of so many talented Negros to the city, New York was able to become a center for the revival of a culture. Even so, it was obvious to McKay and various others that blacks were not given the privileges they deserved after the Reconstruction. It was during this time period that sets of rigid anti-black laws, called the Jim Crow laws, controlled most aspects of the poet’s life. McKay wrote “The White House” to demonstrate how he was determined to stand against hate:
Your door is shut against my tightened face,
And I am sharp as steel with discontent;
But I possess the courage and the grace
To bear my anger proudly and unbent.
The pavement slabs burn loose beneath my feet,
A chafing savage, down the decent street;
And passion rends my vitals as I pass,
Where boldly shines your shuttered door of glass.
Oh, I must search for wisdom every hour,
Deep in my wrathful bosom sore and raw,
And find in it the superhuman power
To hold me to the letter of your law!
Oh, I must keep my heart inviolate
Against the potent poison of your hate.
To McKay, achieving freedom from slavery was not enough. To McKay, blacks and whites were not to be separated at nightclubs or rejected from special theater seats. To McKay, blacks not only needed the same rights as the rest of American citizens, but they also needed to stand as a group and feel pride in their race.
McKay was intelligent. He knew that he was not in the battle against racism alone. Claude McKay wrote poetry, articles, and novels to depict the unfair life of a Negro in America. How did he discriminate in choosing friends? In one of his autobiographies, A Long Way from Home, McKay documented his emotions, personality, and experiences as he traveled from Harlem to London to Russia to France to Africa and back to America. Along the way, he met many influential people and made many dear friends. Some of these friends were revolutionists, most involved in advancing Communism. McKay fought the war against discrimination with these people and others. Figues such as James Weldon Johnson, Walter White, other leaders of the National Association of the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), black radicals of Harlem, and the Japanese Communist Sen Katayama. He was not racist when making friends, and he was aware that there were plenty of whites who supported his cause. Some white associates of McKay, such as Frank Harris and Max Eastman, were major figures of the time, but McKay also had personal companions. A prime example is Michael, McKay’s white friend who was also a thief and a gangster.
McKay was uncomfortable when other blacks did not stand for justice. He was disgusted by writers who aligned themselves to standards in the white society. The following sonnet is perhaps one of McKay’s most famous ones. “If We Must Die” calls blacks to action for the fight against racism:
If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursèd lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
He believed that blacks should embrace their blackness, and when necessary, they should defend it. Those who made themselves appealing to white society seemed lazy and ignorant to McKay. For instance, the Negro writer William Stanley Braithwaite once advised McKay to be less obvious about his race in his poetry. This would make his poetry more attractive to whites. Instead, McKay clarified that since he was born black, he would not suppress his identity to please someone else.
How did McKay’s personality and talent wire him to become the person he was? As a poet, McKay was extremely sensitive and observant. This could also be a reason why he took so much offense at racial injustice. Due to the constant prejudice against him, he was more sour than not. He did not judge people based on their looks (although he knew a beauty when he saw one), but he always formulated an opinion on someone once he exchanged a few sentences with him or her. Since he was an artist, he believed in showing the truth, and thus he never enjoyed telling lies. McKay had to repeatedly emphasize his profession to strangers, including British playwright George Bernard Shaw, who thought boxing suited the poet’s physique, and the residents of Russia, who wanted him to be an extraordinary Negro revolutionary. McKay’s interest in communism probably stemmed from his desire for justice, but he was never an overt radical. He certainly made this clear on several occasions in A Long Way from Home, especially when he traveled to Moscow, where he refused to be identified as a Communist activist for the public eye.
Claude McKay was not only sensitive, he was also stubborn. Between a headstrong personality and an extraordinary intellect, nothing could stop McKay from working towards what he wanted. As he traveled around the world and gathered more wisdom, McKay was able to find more fuel for his writing and for his advocating. Mostly, he was a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance, and he was a key in the development of Black Pride in America. His poem “America” reflects his feelings about racism in a country he loved, and it illustrates the change he wished to see for all of its citizens.
Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate.
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,
Beneath the touch of Time’s unerring hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.
