Who is Claude McKay: Civil Rights Activist

The 1900s was truly a time of militants as Black Americans fought for civil integration or full civil rights. One such African American who took his pen to advocate the Black rights was Claude McKay. Born in a farmhouse on a rural area in Jamaica on September 15, 1890, McKay had been aware early on what slavery was and how it brutally damaged people and families. He had been told of how his ancestors vowed to each commit suicide if each were to be sold separately. These and other experiences likely influenced his writing as a boy and later as an adult.

In 1912, he published Songs of Jamaica. That was also the time when McKay traveled to the United States and studied subsequently in Tuskegee Institute and Kansas State University. Later, he began contributing to Max Eastman's The Liberator where his poems like If We Must Die saw print. He eventually became its associate editor. The Liberator was known to be a journal which was vocal in its political and social criticism and McKay, excited and exultant considered it an honor to be a part of the publication.

As a writer for the publication, McKay came to gradually see even more of the terrible reality of racial discrimination and what he witnessed reflected in such works as Harlem Shadows (1922), and Trial by Lynching: Stories About Negro Life in America (1925).

In 1919, he found his way to England and he became acquainted with Sylvia Pankhurst who invited him to write for the Workers' Dreadnought, thinking that McKay could offer a fresh take on matters of interest to the readers. While in Europe, he became an advocate of Marxist socialism. He represented the American Workers' Party in Moscow in 1922.

McKay had also traveled outside the United States, visiting France, Spain and the Soviet Union. While traveling, he publishedHome to Harlem (1928), Banjo (1928), Gingertown (1932) and Banana Bottom (1933).

In 1934, back in the United States, McKay became disillusioned with communism and abandoned its beliefs, thereby incurring the criticism of those who were supporters of communisms. At this time he began work for the Federal Writer's Project. He was however, unable to maintain work as a writer and eventually ended up as a worker at a shipbuilding yard.

In 1940 he received American citizenship and in 1940 he became a Roman Catholic and wrote On Becoming a Roman Catholic. While preoccupied with work with a Catholic organization, he continued writing for various publications and published his autobiography A Long Way from Home (1937). McKay died on May 22, 1948.

In Max Eastman's own words, he describes McKay's passing, "His last years were passed in sickness; he could not write much; and he was destitute. He lived in penury, and watched his fame and popularity gradually disappear from the earth. A few years more and he would have seen them rise again, for his choice was as correct as it was courageous, and his place in the world's literature is unique and is assured."