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Claude McKay |
Born in Jamaica, Claude McKay came to New York in 1912 and worked as a railroad porter and newspaper editor. His poem, “If We Must Die”, was a strong response to the lynchings and race riots in 1919, and it made him famous among those who were fighting for black self-determination. He experimented with bisexuality and drugs and moved to London in 1919. As a prominent socialist of the time, he attended the Third Communist International in Moscow in 1922, and then wandered in Europe, the Soviet Union, and Africa, poor and in poor health, writing his best novels.
When he returned to the United States in 1936, he received a Federal Writers Project grant to finish his autobiography, A Long Way from Home, but he was unable to rekindle his fame. He found work in a Chicago shipyard, taught in a Catholic school, and died in poverty at the age of fifty-nine. “I have nothing to give but my singing. All my life I have been a troubadour wanderer, nourishing myself mainly on the poetry of existence.”
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Immortal Poets: Their Lives and Verse, by Christopher Burns |