The Struggles of Claude McKay
Claude McKay was born on September 15, 1889 in Jamaica to a family who was educated and well off. When McKay was four he started to go to basic school at his church. At the age of seven McKay was sent to live with his brother, who was a teacher at a school in another district. While living with his brother, Claude McKay became an avid reader and writer, regularly reading British literature, philosophies and science. He started to write poetry at the age of ten. Near the age of 16, McKay met Walter Jekyll, who slowly became his mentor and his inspiration to pursue his talent in writing. Jekyll helped him publish his first poems in a book entitled Songs of Jamaica. This first book of poems jump-started his career (it was said that King George read this volume) and allowed him to go to America and study.
In Jamaica, McKay was a young and renowned artist who was considered the next big thing and he left for America in 1912 to attend Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institution. When he arrived he was shocked by the racism that was present in America: immigrants from all over the world were not treated as equals, they were beaten down, scorned, and viewed as less superior to the white Europeans. But, arguably, blacks were treated the worst. They were segregated to different restrooms, restaurants, schools, and even neighborhoods. 
They were beaten if they entered a white-only place, and were arrested if they sat in the wrong section of the bus. Claude McKay was a native Jamaican. Being both an immigrant and a black man, Claude McKay’s journey to become a renowned writer was not an easy one. In Jamaica, Claude McKay had had a nice life. As a young boy he was known as a good writer, he was well respected and honored as the next poet. But in America, he was criticized by people reading his poetry for being too black and for favoring the black community over the white community. He was occasionally excluded from the parties that authors and editors went to because of his racial overtones in his poetry, but overall, he led a very active social life after he became more established.
Claude McKay’s first job in the United States was as a Pullman Porter. As a Pullman Porter he was to serve mostly white people on trains. He began to realize that the passengers treated him and the other porters condescendingly. This was the first segregation that Claude McKay had to face in his life as an American, and as a writer. Later in his career as a Pullman Porter, he was one of the many train car waiters who were rejected from creating a worker’s union. He wrote out his feelings in a poem:
Alfonso, Dressing to Wait at Table
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.
McKay became angry at the social divide between whites and blacks and at the so-called “equal and free country”. He thrust his anger into poems such as America. African America editors, like Hubert Harrison, told him that his writing was too afrocentric, and that his style was too easy to identify as a black mans’. He began to believe that they were trying to take away his identity. Claude McKay became more and more frustrated with the United States.
Before the Harlem Renaissance, there was a Reconstruction Period, producing many inspirational figures such as W.E.B. Dubois
, Booker T. Washington
and George Washington Carver, 
who each played different roles in Claude McKay’s life. Frank Harris, 
who was a writer’s critic, was the first person in NYC to notice the talent of the young poet. In fact the first chapter is entitled “A Great Editor” in McKay’s autobiography, A Long Way From Home. Much of McKay’s inspiration came from the critics and writers who took a lot of criticism from others in this industry. McKay followed in their footsteps but ignored all the criticism about his writing. Because of his determination and heart, McKay slowly worked his way up the ladder, gaining social relevance with every new poem he wrote. His resilience and stubbornness caused him to be one of the most respected writers in the United States. Once he proved that he would not give in to peer pressure, he began to command the respect of critics such as Du Bois, Langston Hughes
and Hubert Harrison.
Finally, when Claude McKay went to visit Russia, he was treated as a highly-renowned writer, eating with the presidents of companies, and world-renowned authors. Starting as a lowly Pullman Porter, he had had to put in all his talent and effort, and slowly work his way towards being recognized as a writer. With his writing talent and his support of Communism, he became a star in Russia. While in Russia he met many of the famous Communists. Meeting all of these leaders caused McKay to realize where he stood from a political standpoint, which was with communist countries. Because of the social divide between communist theory and the United States’ capitalist democracy, McKay found himself occupying a political stance. However, he never identified as a politician and as a spokesperson, retaining his identity as an artist throughout. He refused to be classified or treated as immigrants and black men were treated at that time. For example, when Claude McKay went to a theater to watch a play and review it for a journal, the owners ordered him to give up his seat. When Claude McKay refused, he was kicked out. With these types of actions, Claude McKay slowly began to command the respect of his readers.
As Claude McKay’s writing career progressed, he started to direct his anger at the United States. Poems such as On Broadway and Harlem Shadows express the constraints and sadness that he feels while living in the United States.
Harlem Shadows
By Claude McKay
I hear the halting footsteps of a lass
In Negro Harlem when the night lets fall
Its veil. I see the shapes of girls who pass
To bend and barter at desire’s call.
Ah, little dark girls who in slippered feet
Go prowling through the night from street to street!
Through the long night until the silver break
Of day the little gray feet know no rest;
Through the lone night until the last snow-flake
Has dropped from heaven upon the earth’s white breast,
The dusky, half-clad girls of tired feet
Are trudging, thinly shod, from street to street.
Ah, stern harsh world, that in the wretched way
Of poverty, dishonor and disgrace,
Has pushed the timid little feet of clay,
The sacred brown feet of my fallen race!
Ah, heart of me, the weary, weary feet
In Harlem wandering from street to street.
In Harlem Shadows, he uses the shadows to symbolize the African Americans that are hiding and too afraid to be themselves. McKay started to become uncomfortable when other blacks did not stand for justice for example, writers who aligned themselves to the standards in white society disgusted him. McKay believed that blacks should embrace their blackness and when necessary, defend it. The following poem is one of McKay’s more famous ones. If We Must Die is a sonnet that provokes a feeling from the reader, and when necessary, defend it. If We Must Die is a sonnet that provokes outrage from the reader, and caused a very strong reaction when it was first published:
If We Must Die
By Claude McKay
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 accursed lot.
If we must die—oh, 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!
Oh, Kinsmen! We must meet the common foe;
Though far outnumbered, let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow!
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!
McKay was not only sensitive, he was also stubborn. Between a headstrong personality and an extraordinary intellect, nothing could stop McKay from working for what he wanted. As he traveled around the world he made many dear friends. Along the way, he met many influential people. Some of these friends were revolutionaries most involved in advancing Communism. McKay fought the war against discrimination with these people and others, such as: James Weldon Johnson, Walter White, other leaders of the National Association of the Advancement of Colored People,
and other influential African American figures. But McKay was not racist when making friends, and he was aware that there were plenty of whites that 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 other white personal companions. An example is Michael, McKay’s friend who was a thief and a gangster.
McKay was key to 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:
America
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.
In Dawn in New York, McKay expresses ideas of a new start for not only New York, but also America. At first, dawn comes to the city, and McKay is one of the few awake, but as the sun rises, his dreams disappear and he must go work as a Pullman Porter. He is a ‘rebel’ going to his work. From working as a lowly Pullman Porter to gaining admiration as a successful writer, McKay expresses the idea that anybody can become better, and that the Dawn, perhaps, is the ideal time for an ambitious poet to awaken:
Dawn in New York
The Dawn! The Dawn! The crimson-tinted, comes
Out of the low still skies, over the hills,
Manhattan’s roofs and spires and cheerless domes!
The Dawn! My spirit to its spirit thrills.
Almost the mighty city is asleep,
No pushing crowd, no tramping, tramping feet.
But here and there a few cars groaning creep
Along, above, and underneath the street,
Bearing their strangely-ghostly burdens by,
The women and the men of garish nights,
Their eyes wine-weakened and their clothes awry,
Grotesques beneath the strong electric lights.
The shadows wane. The Dawn comes to New York.
And I go darkly-rebel to my work.
The journey that Claude McKay ventured on is a journey that many had to take, but only a few survived with such success. He had to take hate from critics and the average person, he had to change his entire lifestyle when he moved from Jamaica to America: he had to go from being a celebrated writer in Jamaica to starting at the bottom in the USA. Not everybody has the willpower to get through hardships like this. Poems like Harlem Shadows gave African Americans something to fight for. Claude McKay changed black culture; he boosted the confidence in the black ability and in their race. Claude McKay’s acts gave a voice to the voiceless.