some four books of poetry, four novels, an autobi-
ography, a social history of HARLEM, and several
essays in diverse publications such as The Nation,
Ebony, Phylon,and the Interracial Reviewduring his
lifetime.
Born in September 1889, McKay was the
youngest of 11 children born to Thomas Francis
McKay and his wife, Ann Elizabeth Edwards
McKay, in Nairne Castle, Jamaica. The family, who
made there living as farmers, were from Clarendon
Parish in Jamaica. McKay’s parents were ambitious
and eventually owned some 100 acres of land in
the area. Scholar Winston James notes that
Thomas McKay, whose earliest employment was as
a laborer, also became a successful sugar maker
who had his own boiler and sugarhouse in which
he manufactured sugar using his own highly prized
Chattanooga mill exported from Tennessee (James,
98). McKay’s parents provided him with his earli-
est lessons in the power of literature and the inspir-
ing history of peoples of African descent. His pa-
ternal grandfather, from the Ashanti tribe in West
Africa, was enslaved, and Thomas McKay under-
scored the tragedy of such bondage for his son.
McKay grew up in Jamaica while it was under colo-
nial rule, and his formal education was based on
traditional British materials and history. He
learned much from his schoolteacher brother,
Uriah, and took advantage of the opportunity to
read widely from his brother’s library. In 1911, after
apprenticeships that included work with wheel-
wright Walter Jekyll, his first patron and an ac-
quaintance of Robert Louis Stevenson, McKay
joined the constabulary force in Spanish Town. He
witnessed firsthand the racial politics that in-
formed the justice system and developed an an-
tipathy for the city that would not soon subside.
He left before completing one year of service and
returned to the more stable world of his family’s
home in Clarendon.
McKay’s first published works, Songs of Ja-
maica and Constab Ballads,both of which were
collections of dialect poetry, appeared in 1912. His
mentor Walter Jekyll was of great assistance to
McKay. He was instrumental in arranging the
publication of McKay’s two books and provided
the introduction to Songs of Jamaica.McKay dedi-
cated his first book to Sir Sydney Olivier, the gov-
ernor of Jamaica and a friend of Jekyll’s, whom he
lauded as one who “by his sympathy with the
black race has won the love and admiration of all
Jamaicans” (Maxwell, 282). Jekyll, whose intro-
duction attempted to clarify the patois, linguistic
styles, and turns of phrase that McKay used in the
poems, also noted that “[r]eaders of this volume
will be interested to know that they here have the
thoughts and feelings of a Jamaican peasant of
pure black blood” who had “spent his early years
in the depths of the country” (Maxwell, 285). De-
spite his discomfort and eventual rejection of life
in the constabulary, McKay dedicated his volume
Constab Balladsto his former supervisors, Inspector-
General A. E. Kershaw and Inspector W. E. Clark.
McKay was gracious in his tribute, noting that it
was under these men that he had “had the honor
of serving” and that he “respectfully and gratefully
dedicated the volume.” In his preface to the vol-
ume, McKay provided some insights into the chal-340 McKay, Claude
Claude McKay, author. Photograph by Carl Van
Vechten. Permission granted by the Van Vechten Trust
(Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare
Book and Manuscript Library)