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“America”
“America” – Claude McKay (Poet’s Life)
Festus Claudius McKay, better known as Claude McKay, was a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance, a prominent literary movement
of the 1920s. His work ranged from vernacular verse celebrating peasant life in Jamaica to fairly militant poems challenging white
authority in America, and from generally straightforward tales of black life in both Jamaica and America to more philosophically
ambitious fiction addressing instinctual/intellectual duality, which McKay found central to the black individual's efforts to cope in a
racist society. Consistent in his various writings is his disdain for racism and the sense that bigotry's implicit stupidity renders its
adherents pitiable as well as loathsome. As Arthur D. Drayton wrote in his essay "Claude McKay's Human Pity" (included by editor
Ulli Beier in the volume Introduction to African Literature): "McKay does not seek to hide his bitterness. But having preserved his
vision as poet and his status as a human being, he can transcend bitterness. In seeing . . . the significance of the Negro for mankind as
a whole, he is at once protesting as a Negro and uttering a cry for the race of mankind as a member of that race. His human pity was
the foundation that made all this possible."
McKay was born in Sunny Ville, Jamaica, in 1889. The son of peasant farmers, he was infused with racial pride and a great sense of
his African heritage. His early literary interests, though, were in English poetry. Under the tutelage of his brother, schoolteacher Uriah
Theophilus McKay, and a neighboring Englishman, Walter Jekyll, McKay studied the British masters—including John Milton,
Alexander Pope, and the later Romantics—and European philosophers such as eminent pessimist Arthur Schopenhauer, whose works
Jekyll was then translating from German into English. It was Jekyll who advised aspiring poet McKay to cease mimicking the English
poets and begin producing verse in Jamaican dialect.
At age seventeen McKay departed from Sunny Ville to apprentice as a woodworker in Brown's Town. But he studied there only
briefly before leaving to work as a constable in the Jamaican capital, Kingston. In Kingston he experienced and encountered extensive
racism, probably for the first time in his life. His native Sunny Ville was predominantly populated by blacks, but in substantially white
Kingston blacks were considered inferior and capable of only menial tasks. McKay quickly grew disgusted with the city's bigoted
society, and within one year he returned home to Sunny Ville.
During his brief stays in Brown's Town and Kingston McKay continued writing poetry, and once back in Sunny Ville, with Jekyll's
encouragement, he published the verse collections Songs of Jamaica and Constab Ballads in London in 1912. In these two volumes
McKay portrays opposing aspects of black life in Jamaica. Songs of Jamaica presents an almost celebratory portrait of peasant life,
with poems addressing subjects such as the peaceful death of McKay's mother and the black people's ties to the Jamaican land.
Constab Ballads, however, presents a substantially bleaker perspective on the plight of Jamaican blacks and contains several poems
explicitly critical of life in urban Kingston. Writing in The Negro Novel in America, Robert Bone noted the differing sentiments of the
two collections, but he also contended that the volumes share a sense of directness and refreshing candor. He wrote: "These first two
volumes are already marked by a sharpness of vision, an inborn realism, and a freshness which provides a pleasing contrast with the
conventionality which, at this time, prevails among the black poets of the United States."
For Songs of Jamaica McKay received an award and stipend from the Jamaican Institute of Arts and Sciences. He used the money to
finance a trip to America, and in 1912 he arrived in South Carolina. He then traveled to Alabama and enrolled at the Tuskegee
Institute, where he studied for approximately two months before transferring to Kansas State College. In 1914 he left school entirely
for New York City and worked various menial jobs. As in Kingston, McKay encountered racism in New York City, and that racism
compelled him to continue writing poetry.
In 1917, under the pseudonym Eli Edwards, McKay published two poems in the periodical Seven Arts. His verses were discovered by
critic Frank Hattis, who then included some of McKay's other poems in Pearson's Magazine. Among McKay's most famous poems
from this period is "To the White Fiends," a vitriolic challenge to white oppressors and bigots. A few years later McKay befriended
Max Eastman, communist sympathizer and editor of the magazine Liberator. McKay published more poems in Eastman's magazine,
notably the inspirational "If We Must Die," which defended black rights and threatened retaliation for prejudice and abuse. "Like men
we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack," McKay wrote, "Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!" In Black Poets of the United
States, Jean Wagner noted that "If We Must Die" transcends specifics of race and is widely prized as an inspiration to persecuted
people throughout the world. "Along with the will to resistance of black Americans that it expresses," Wagner wrote, "it voices also
the will of oppressed people of every age who, whatever their race and wherever their region, are fighting with their backs against the
wall to win their freedom."
Upon publication of "If We Must Die" McKay commenced two years of travel and work abroad. He spent part of 1919 in Holland and
Belgium, then moved to London and worked on the periodical Workers' Dreadnought. In 1920 he published his third verse collection,
Spring in New Hampshire, which was notable for containing "Harlem Shadows," a poem about the plight of black prostitutes in the
degrading urban environment. McKay used this poem, which symbolically presents the degradation of the entire black race, as the title
for a subsequent collection.
McKay returned to the United States in 1921 and involved himself in various social causes. The next year he published Harlem
Shadows, a collection from previous volumes and periodicals publications. This work contains many of his most acclaimed poems—
including "If We Must Die"—and assured his stature as a leading member of the literary movement referred to as the Harlem
Renaissance. He capitalized on his acclaim by redoubling his efforts on behalf of blacks and laborers: he became involved in the
Universal Negro Improvement Association and produced several articles for its publication, Negro World, and he traveled to the
Soviet Union which he had previously visited with Eastman, and attended the Communist Party's Fourth Congress.
Eventually McKay went to Paris, where he developed a severe respiratory infection and supported himself intermittently by working
as an artist's model. His infection eventually necessitated his hospitalization, but after recovering he resumed traveling, and for the
next eleven years he toured Europe and portions of northern Africa. During this period he also published three novels and a short story
collection. The first novel, Home to Harlem, may be his most recognized title. Published in 1928, it concerns a black soldier—Jake—
who abruptly abandons his military duties and returns home to Harlem. Jake represents, in rather overt fashion, the instinctual aspect
of the individual, and his ability to remain true to his feelings enables him to find happiness with a former prostitute, Felice.
Juxtaposed with Jake's behavior is that of Ray, an aspiring writer burdened with despair. His sense of bleakness derives largely from
his intellectualized perspective, and it eventually compels him to leave alien, racist America for his homeland of Haiti.
In The Negro Novel in America, Robert Bone wrote that the predominantly instinctual Jake and the intellectual Ray "represent
different ways of rebelling against Western civilization." Bone added, however, that McKay was not entirely successful in articulating
his protagonists' relationships in white society. He declared that Home to Harlem was "unable to develop its primary conflict" and thus
"bogs down in the secondary contrast between Jake and Ray." The novel also provides a detailed portrayal of the underside of black
urban life, with its prostitutes and gamblers, and McKay was applauded for creating "a work of vivid social realism," according to
Alan L. McLeod in the Dictionary of Literary Biography. However, McKay himself "stressed that he aimed at emotional realism—he
wanted to highlight his characters' feelings rather than their social circumstances," McLeod continued. Nevertheless, it was his
glimpse into the "unsavory aspects of New York black life" that was prized by readers—and condemned by such prominent black
leaders as W. E. B. Du Bois.
Home to Harlem—with its sordid, occasionally harrowing scenes of ghetto life—proved extremely popular, and it gained recognition
as the first commercially successful novel by a black writer. McKay quickly followed it with Banjo: A Story without a Plot, a novel
about a black vagabond living in the French port of Marseilles. Like Jake from Home to Harlem, protagonist Banjo embodies the
largely instinctual way of living, though he is considerably more enterprising and quick-witted than the earlier character. Ray, the
intellectual from Home to Harlem, also appears in Banjo. His plight is that of many struggling artists who are compelled by social
circumstances to support themselves with conventional employment. Both Banjo and Ray are perpetually dissatisfied and disturbed by
their limited roles in white society, and by the end of the novel the men are prepared to depart from Marseilles.
Banjo failed to match the acclaim and commercial success of Home to Harlem, but it confirmed McKay's reputation as a serious,
provocative artist. "It was apparent to critics that McKay's imagination had been somewhat strained and that the novel was essentially
an autobiographical exercise," McLeod remarked. Commentators have found the autobiographical thread in Home to Harlem and
Banjo primarily in the character of Ray, whose peripatetic existence to some extent mirrors the author's own, as does the character's
admiration for the beauty of young men's bodies. Patti Cappel Swartz digs for clues to McKay's sexuality in the author's fictional
works, and points to a dream sequence in Home to Harlem and the fact that "for Ray, the bonds with men will always supersede those
with women," as is shown in the conclusion of Banjo. "Like McKay, Ray is not the marrying kind, but rather the vagabond who must
always travel on," Swartz continued.
In his third novel, Banana Bottom, McKay presented a more incisive exploration of his principal theme, the black individual's quest
for cultural identity in a white society. Banana Bottom recounts the experiences of a Jamaican peasant girl, Bita, who is adopted by
white missionaries after suffering a rape. Bita's new providers try to impose their cultural values on her by introducing her to
organized Christianity and the British educational system. Their actions culminate in a horribly bungled attempt to arrange Bita's
marriage to an aspiring minister. The prospective groom is exposed as a sexual aberrant, whereupon Bita flees white society. She
eventually marries a drayman, Jubban, and raises their child in an idealized peasant Jamaican environment. "Bita has pride in
blackness, is free of hypocrisy, and is independent and discerning in her values," remarked McLeod. "Praise for Banana Bottom has
been unanimous."
Critics agree that Banana Bottom is McKay's most skillful delineation of the black individual's predicament in white society.
Unfortunately, the novel's thematic worth was largely ignored when the book first appeared in 1933. Positive reviews of the time were
related to McKay's extraordinary evocation of the Jamaican tropics and his mastery of melodrama. In the ensuing years, though,
Banana Bottom has gained increasing acknowledgement as McKay's finest fiction and the culmination of his efforts to articulate his
own tension and unease through the novel.
McKay's other noteworthy fiction publication during his final years abroad was Gingertown, a collection of twelve short stories. Six of
the tales are devoted to Harlem life, and they reveal McKay's preoccupation with black exploitation and humiliation. Other tales are
set in Jamaica and even in North Africa, McKay's last foreign home before he returned to the United States in the mid-1930s. Once
back in Harlem he began an autobiographical work, A Long Way from Home, in which he related his own problems as a black
individual in a white society. The book is considered unreliable as material for his autobiography because, for example, in it McKay
denies his membership in the communist party, as McLeod points out. However, A Long Way from Home does state McKay's longheld belief that American blacks should unite in the struggle against colonialism, segregation, and oppression.
By the late 1930s McKay had developed a keen interest in Catholicism. Through Ellen Tarry, who wrote children's books, he became
active in Harlem's Friendship House. His newfound religious interest, together with his observations and experiences at the Friendship
House, inspired his essay collection, Harlem: Negro Metropolis, which offers an account of the black community in Harlem during
the 1920s and 1930s. Like Banjo, Banana Bottom, and Gingertown, Harlem: Negro Metropolis failed to spark much interest from a
reading public that was a tiring of literature by and about blacks. Critic McLeod offers a more recent evaluation of the work, the
writing of which was based as much on scholarly inquiry as on personal observation, as McKay was absent from the country for a
good deal of the period covered: "The book has been superseded by many more-scholarly studies, yet it retains value as a
reexamination of Harlem by one who had established a necessary critical distance." With his reputation already waning, McKay
moved to Chicago and worked as a teacher for a Catholic organization. By the mid-1940s his health had deteriorated. He endured
several illnesses throughout his last years and eventually died of heart failure in May 1948.
In the years immediately following his death McKay's reputation continued to decline as critics found him conventional and somewhat
shallow. Recently, however, McKay has gained recognition for his intense commitment to expressing the predicament of his fellow
blacks, and he is now admired for devoting his art and life to social protest. As Robert A. Smith wrote in his Phylon publication,
"Claude McKay: An Essay in Criticism": "Although he was frequently concerned with the race problem, his style is basically lucid.
One feels disinclined to believe that the medium which he chose was too small, or too large for his message. He has been heard."
McKay continues to be associated with the phenomenon known as the Harlem Renaissance, though he lived outside of the country for
much of the period, and has found new audiences among readers of commonwealth literature and gay and lesbian literature. McLeod
concluded his essay in Dictionary of Literary Biography with the following accolades: "That he was able to capture a universality of
sentiment in 'If We Must Die' has been fully demonstrated; that he was able to show new directions for the black novel is now
acknowledged; and that he is rightly regarded as one of the harbingers of (if not one of the participants in) the Harlem Renaissance is
undisputed."
Career
Writer. Worked as cabinetmaker's apprentice and wheelwright; constable, Jamaican Constabulary, Kingston, Jamaica, 1909;
longshoreman, porter, bartender, and waiter, 1910-14; restaurateur, 1914; writer for Pearsons Magazine, 1918, and Workers'
Dreadnought in London, England, 1919; associate editor of Liberator, 1921; American Workers representative at Third International
in Moscow, U.S.S.R., 1922; artist's model in mid-1920s; worked for Rex Ingram's film studio in France, c. 1926; shipyard worker, c.
1941; worked with the National Catholic Youth Association, 1944-48.
Source Citation: Go to Poetryfoundation.org to find the source citation.
“America” – Claude McKay (Historical Events)
Historical Events
In 1951, when “Harlem” was first published, race relations were much different in the United States than they are today. Racism still
exists, but there are now laws that can be used to fight against discrimination. Most of these laws were enacted during a period from
the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s, when blacks became impatient with deferring their dreams and whites, especially in the Southern
states, resisted the social forces that were pushing for equality. The Civil War ended in 1865, and with its end, slavery became extinct
in the United States, but the freed blacks did not receive full citizenship status. In the late 1800s, former slave states passed a series of
laws known as Jim Crow laws (after a foolish, childlike Negro character in an 1832 minstrel comedy). These laws made it illegal for
blacks to vote, ride public transportation, attend schools with whites, and other functions that would have enabled African Americans
to become equal members of society. Although many citizens opposed these laws, especially in the North where there had been no
slavery, the Supreme Court ruled in 1886 that they were constitutional so long as blacks had facilities similar to those of whites. In
that case, Plessy vs. Ferguson, the court ruled that the legality of Jim Crow laws rested upon there being “separate but equal”
accommodations for both races: in reality, though, blacks were given the worst of everything. To keep blacks from gaining political
power, there were other laws that made it difficult to register to vote, requiring land ownership and passage of bogus I.Q. tests that
were seldom administered to caucasians. Many African Americans moved North, where laws did not discriminate, even though people
still did. Opportunities for advancement were still scarce in the North, mainly because of the economic/educational circle
(undereducated people cannot get well-paying jobs, and people with poor incomes cannot afford higher education). In the South in the
first half of this century, blacks were lynched by white supremacist organizations, such as the Ku Klux Klan.
During World War II, from 1941 to 1945, the armed forces became the most integrated organization that the United States had ever
had. Although it would still be decades until blacks were admitted to the higher ranks of officers, opportunity was, to a wide extent,
equal among enlisted men. This meant that returning veterans came home with a greater sense of how racial equality was possible,
raising hopes for integration in whites as well as in blacks. These hopes sometimes twisted into anger when black veterans found
civilian society a step backwards from their life in the army: full scale riots broke out in 1946 in Columbia, Tennessee, and Athens,
Alabama, as well as lesser racial confrontations in dozens of other cities.
As the call for a new racial openness in the United States grew, though, another social force was also growing: fear of the threat of
Communism. World War II had weakened or destroyed most of the powerful European nations and left the Soviet Union as the only
other world power with might that could compare to the United States. The two counties had different social philosophies and each
was afraid that the other would plant spies in its government or its media to cause its collapse. These techniques were tried by both
sides, but not nearly to the degree that citizens feared them. In the South, the public’s fear of Communism was used by some whites to
oppose integration. In the Presidential election of 1948, for example, Democrat Harry Truman and Republican Thomas Dewey were
opposed by southern Senator Strom Thurmond, with the newly formed States Rights Democratic party. Thurmond claimed that
regular Democrats supported civil rights due to their “Communist ideology,” arguing that Democrats intended to “excite race and
class hatred” and “create chaos and confusion which leads to communism.” Truman just barely won the election. In 1948, by an
Executive Order from the President, a commission was established to study equal treatment in the armed forces. Historians believe
that the committee’s recommendations would have pushed integration further if the country had not become involved in the Korean
Conflict to stop the spread of Communism. As it was, proposals made in 1949 by the Truman administration regarding racial issues
like lynchings and voter registration were held up in Congress until the Civil Rights Act of 1957.
Source Citation: "Harlem." Poetry for Students. Ed. Marie Rose Napierkowski. Vol. 1. Detroit: Gale, 1998. 61-73. Gale Virtual
Reference Library. Web. 26 Jan. 2012.
“America” – Claude McKay (Criticism)
Poem Explanation
Claude McKay grew up in Jamaica without the crippling effects of racial prejudice. He was taught free-thinking doctrines from his
older schoolteacher brother—ideas which survived in his adult advocacy of Communism—and a friendship he struck with an English
linguist introduced him to the classics. His friend's interest in linguistics no doubt was instrumental in McKay's use of his native
dialect in his poetry. He strongly identified with the Jamaican landscape and its peasant classes, while his employment as a constable
led him to dwell upon the rough districts of the capitol Kingston in ballad forms. But McKay also internalized the poetic standards of
the English tradition. In later life he abandoned dialect and popular forms altogether, drawing inspiration from the British Romantics.
Thus in his use of the traditional sonnet form, following his predecessor Paul Laurence Dunbar, he existed in a cultural limbo,
rejecting his native tongue while yearning for the linguistic purity of the English lyric. While traditional in form and blind to cultural
imperialism in the realm of art, he exemplified a militant stance against oppression. He never ceased his onslaught against racism and
injustice; as he wrote in his famous "If We Must Die," "Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack / Pressed to the wall, dying,
but fighting back."
McKay's "America" exemplifies his love of his adopted land, as well as a revulsion against its racist attitudes. Until his final
conversion to Catholicism, he advocated active resistance to discrimination and abuse, and his sonnet displays his overflowing passion
for freedom. He initially sounds the defiant note of Milton's Satan, making a heaven of hell: "Although she feeds me bread of
bitterness, / And sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth, / Stealing my breath of life, I will confess / I love this cultured hell that tests my
youth!" This reference to Milton itself suggests his relationship to the dominant literary tradition—even though he is an outsider to its
literary language, a fallen angel, so to speak, he embraces that foreign tongue.
McKay had traveled the country and knew first-hand the dynamic energy of such metropolitan centers as New York City, with its
electric discharge of energy so foreign to rural Jamaica, and the greatness of its size. Like Whitman, he celebrates this vast expanse of
the nation: "Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood." But, unlike Whitman, his stance is not ultimately celebratory, for blacks could
not fully participate in the grand project of democracy. He states his rebellious stance directly—he is a rebel standing proudly before
the king—but he stops short of directly advocating violence as a legitimate form of resistance, though elsewhere his writing does
prefigure the aggressive politics of Malcom X. Instead, like Shelley in "Ozymandias," he envisions the inevitable destruction of
oppressive regimes by Time the destroyer: "Darkly I gaze into the days ahead, / And see her might and granite wonders there, /
Beneath the touch of time's unerring hand, / Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand." McKay's vision is ultimately apocalyptic,
seeking a harsh judgment upon a nation he views as racist.
Source Citation: "Explanation of: 'America (McKay, Claude)' by Claude McKay." LitFinder Contemporary Collection. Detroit: Gale,
2000. LitFinder for Schools. Web. 26 Jan. 2012.