Claude McKay

The poetry of Claude McKay (15 Sept. 1890-22 May 1948) was an early precursor to the Harlem Renaissance. By 1922, his poetry had already reached the spirit of the Harlem Renaissance. McKay identified with the black masses, and used this identification to express the emotions of everyday Harlem life. He also used his poetry as a forum to protest against racial injustices. McKay ridiculed the Harlem Renaissance as middle class, a class he hated, and left in 1922 for the Soviet Union. As a result, while his poetry was valued and popular during the Harlem Renaissance, he was actually not living in Harlem or even the United States at the time.

Two of McKay's most famous poems are "The Negro's Friend" and "If We Must Die." "If We Must Die" was later used by Winston Churchill to spur British resistance during World War II.

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, 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 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!

There is no radical the Negro's friend
Who points some other than the classic road
For him to follow, fighting to the end,
Thinking to ease him of one half his load.
What waste of time to cry: "No Segregation!"
When it exists in stark reality,
Both North and South, throughout this total nation,
The state decreed by white authority.

Must fifteen million blacks be gratified,
That one of them can enter as a guest,
A fine white house--the rest of them denied
A place of decent sojourn and rest?
Oh, Segregation is not the whole sin,
The Negroes need salvation from within.