Vernell+Mckay

Claude Mckay  aka Eli Edwards

 Born:September 15, 1889 Died: May 22 1948

**__ About me __** ** :

** media type="youtube" key="zVOiwDsqgOY" height="344" width="425" If we Must Die, one of my best works

Hello welcome wikispacers to the wiki page of Claude Mckay aka Eli Edwards I'm a poet and novelist, people have often called "the first voice of the Harlem renaissance." My verse and fiction are best known for protesting the social evils that plagued blacks. I had to stand up for my people, if I didn't who else would, because the government hasn't done a single thing for us since Lincoln. Maybe that's why I got interested in communism, in my early life I was a communist but after I went over to the Soviet Union for a trip I decided that wasn't a route worth taking. I was born September 15, 1889 in James Hill, Clarendon, Jamaica, I was the youngest in the family but my family would always tell me I was so bright I don't know why?. My brother had educated me, he said the only way out of poverty was with an education, I took those words to heart as soon as I heard them. I came to the attention of Walter Jekyll, who helped him publish his first book of poems, Songs of Jamaica, in 1912. These were the first poems published in Patois (dialect of mainly English words with a strong African structure). My next volume, Constab Ballads, came out in the same year and was based on his experience as a police officer in Jamaica. Its something I don't talk about often... I left for the U.S. in 1912, and went to Booker T. Washington's Tuskegee Institute. I felt like I could identify with his views on civil rights. When I came down here I was immediately shocked by the intense racism I encountered in Charleston, South Carolina, where many public facilities were segregated. Some white man called me "nigger" I was baffled by his disrespect, but a black woman told me that's how things work. Disliking the "semi-military, machinelike existence there", I quickly left to study at Kansas State University, the racism was a bit much. When I read W. E. B. Du Bois' Souls of Black Folk, it had a major impact on me instantly. Despite doing well in my exams, in 1914 I decided I did not want to be an agronomist anymore so I went to Japan and married my childhood sweet heart, Eulalie Lewars.



Home Country of Jamaica.

**__ Books and Career: __**  <span style="color: rgb(42, 106, 62);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(42, 106, 62);"><span style="color: rgb(193, 204, 0);">I was also involved in the Harlem Renaissance my first book written during the renaissance was Harlem Shadows (1922) and I wrote three novels: **Home to Harlem**(1928), a best-seller which won the Harmon Gold Award for Literature, **Banjo** (1929), and **Banana Bottom** (1933). Aside from my novels I also authored a collection of short stories, __Gingertown.__(1932), and two autobiographical books, __A Long Way from Home__ (1937) and __Harlem: Negro Metropolis__ (1940).

<span style="background-color: rgb(42, 106, 62);"><span style="color: rgb(193, 204, 0);"> Houses in Harlem        <span style="color: rgb(193, 204, 0); background-color: rgb(33, 97, 62);"><span style="color: rgb(42, 106, 62);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="color: rgb(193, 204, 0);">

<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(42, 106, 62);">In 1919 I met Crystal and Max Eastman, who produced The Liberator (where McKay would serve as Co-Executive Editor until 1922). It was here that I published one of my most famous poems, "If We Must Die", during the "Red Summer", a period of intense racial violence against black people in Anglo-American societies. This was among a page of my poetry which signaled the commencement of my life as a professional writer. I became involved with a group of black radicals who were unhappy both with Marcus Garvey's nationalism and the middle class reformist NAACP. These included the African Caribbean’s Cyril Briggs, Richard B. Moore and Wilfrid Domingo. They fought for black self-determination within the context of socialist revolution. Together we founded the semi-secret revolutionary organization, the African Blood Brotherhood. I soon left for London, England. regular involvement with Workers' Dreadnought and the Workers' Socialist Federation, a Council Communist group active in the East End and which had a majority of women involved in it at all levels of the organization. I became a paid journalist for the Workers' Dreadnought; some people claim I was the first black journalist in Britain. He attended the Communist Unity Conference which established the Communist Party of Great Britain. At this time he also had some of his poetry published in the Cambridge Magazine, edited by C. K. Ogden. <span style="color: rgb(193, 204, 0); background-color: rgb(33, 97, 62);"><span style="color: rgb(42, 106, 62);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">

<span style="color: rgb(193, 204, 0); background-color: rgb(33, 97, 62);"><span style="color: rgb(42, 106, 62);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="color: rgb(193, 204, 0);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(42, 106, 62);">.The Liberator      <span style="color: rgb(193, 204, 0); background-color: rgb(33, 97, 62);"><span style="color: rgb(42, 106, 62);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> <span style="color: rgb(193, 204, 0); background-color: rgb(33, 97, 62);"><span style="color: rgb(42, 106, 62);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> __**Disclaimer:**__ This page was created for a project in our honors class, to create a page based on a character or author in one of the units that we have studied. I chose Claude Mckay and I have created this page about him as if I were acting and talking like him in first person. I hereby announce that I am not the owner of any of these pictures. I have no claims to any of the media uses, most were found of off photobucket and other file sharing websites. I have tried to create a myspace like page for the poet-novelist Claude Mckay. If I have offended anyone it was not meant deliberately but please contact me at the discussion button and we can discuss any problems.

__**Works Cited**__:

James Winston (2003). " Becoming the People's Poet: Claude McKay's Jamaican Years, 1889–1912 ". //Small Axe// **7** (13): 17–45. doi: 10.1353/smx.2003.0009. http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/small_axe/v007/7.1james.html.