lenges that he faced while on the police force.
“Let me confess it at once,” he wrote, “I had not
in me the stuff that goes to the making of a good
constable; for I am so constituted that imagination
outruns discretion, and it is my misfortune to have
a most improper sympathy with wrongdoers”
(Maxwell, 295). He went on to make a quite lib-
eral assessment that “We blacks are all somewhat
impatient of discipline” and that “to the natural
impatience of my race there was added, in my par-
ticular case, a peculiar sensitiveness which made
certain forms of discipline irksome, and a fierce
hatred of injustice” (Maxwell, 296). The response
to his work was extremely positive and earned him
the honor of becoming the first black Jamaican to
win the medal of the island’s Institute of Arts and
Sciences.
McKay left Jamaica for the United States in
1912 and financed his travels with the prize money
that he obtained from the Institute of Arts and
Sciences. He headed first to TUSKEGEEINSTITUTE
in Alabama. He transferred shortly thereafter to
KANSASSTATECOLLEGEin Manhattan, Kansas.
He relocated to NEWYORK CITYin 1914 and
began what would become one of the most produc-
tive and inspiring literary careers of the Harlem
Renaissance. McKay married EULALIEEDWARDS,
his Jamaican childhood sweetheart. The marriage
failed in less than six months, and a pregnant Ed-
wards returned to Jamaica without McKay and
there gave birth to their daughter, Rhue Hope Ed-
wards. Known later as Hope McKay Virtue,
McKay’s daughter attended Columbia Teachers’
College in New York City and corresponded with
her father before his death. Tragically, their plans
to meet for the first time were interrupted by his
collapse and subsequent death due to congestive
heart failure. Hope McKay passed away in 1992.
McKay’s extended family, many of whom still live
in his former Jamaican village, include a set of
twins, who are his great nephew and niece, named
by Hartley McKay, their father, Claude and
Claudette McKay in honor of their accomplished
ancestor (James, “New Light,” 98).
McKay traveled extensively throughout his
life. He lived and worked in London, during the
early 1920s and worked alongside SYLVIA
PANKHURSTand the staff at the socialist journal
WORKER’SDREADNOUGHT.He also completed a
substantial number of poems including the collec-
tion entitled SPRING INNEWHAMPSHIRE.He fi-
nanced his travels to Russia in 1923 by selling
copies of his book HARLEMSHADOWSand then en-
joyed a yearlong stay there. He was quite active in
the COMMUNISTPARTYcircles and took advantage
of the opportunity to speak at the Kremlin and to
participate in the Communist Party’s Fourth
Congress meeting. He then moved on to FRANCE,
where he lived in Paris and was part of the large
expatriate community that included a number of
African Americans. He also traveled to North
Africa and lived in Morocco for a time before re-
turning to America in the mid-1930s.
McKay frequently published under pseudo-
nyms in his early years. He used names inspired by
his daughter, such as RHONDAHOPEand HUGH
HOPE. He honored his former wife when he devel-
oped the pseudonyms E. Edwards, C. E. Edwards,
Ness Edwards. He abandoned his use of these and
other aliases, however, after 1920.
Claude McKay made his American literary
debut in the LIBERATOR,a literary journal edited
by socialist MAXEASTMAN. McKay’s poem “If We
Must Die” is one of the most frequently antholo-
gized American poems. McKay exhorted people of
African descent to defy the deadly oppression that
threatened to undermine their communities, fami-
lies, history, and ambitions. British prime minister
Winston Churchill quoted McKay’s lines during
the Second World War. McKay’s Liberatorpoems
earned him a reputation as a poet who wrote sear-
ing protest poetry. He used graphic images of vio-
lence, vivid language, irony, and sarcasm to
chronicle the effects of mob violence and to justify
widespread resistance to oppression and subjuga-
tion. His early supporters included Eastman and
his sister, CRYSTALEASTMAN. The Eastmans influ-
enced McKay’s growing political consciousness
and were responsible for introducing him to a
number of people with links to the Communist
Party. It was they who published the much-her-
alded poem “If We Must Die,” which THECRISIS,
to which McKay first submitted the work, rejected.
Another important literary ally was Pearson’s Mag-
azineeditor FRANKHARRIS. Harris, an Irish immi-
grant and experienced journal editor, published a
number of McKay’s early American poems in- The two men first met when Harris solicited
McKay, Claude 341