Claude McKays Prominent Position in the Harlem...

Claude McKay real name is Festus Claudius McKay was an important person in the Harlem Renaissance, a prominent literary movement of the 1920s. His poems are traditional in technique and on the sentimental side in subject and tone.1 McKay was born in Sunny Ville, Jamaica, in 1889. McKay was the son of a peasant farmer. He took pride and knew a lot about his African heritage. He was interested in English poetry dealing with literary. McKay’s brother, Uriah Theophilus and an Englishmen Walter Jekyll helped McKay study British masters. McKay studied the British masters including John Milton, Alexander Pope and the later Romantics and European philosophers such as well-known pessimist Arthur Schopenhauer, Jekyll had to translate from†¦show more content†¦He wrote: â€Å"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 b lack poets of the United States. For Songs of Jamaica McKay received an award and paid 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 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 forced him to continue writing poetry. In 1917, under the pseudonym Eli Edwards, McKay published two poems in a journal called the Seven Arts. His poetry was discovered by critic Frank Hattis, who then included some of McKays other poems in Pearsons Magazine. McKays most famous poems from this period was To the White Fiend.† A few years later McKay befriended Max Eastman, editor of the magazine Liberator. McKay published more poems in Eastmans magazine, espe cially the If We Must Die, which defended black rights and threatened revenge for prejudice andShow MoreRelatedHistory5499 Words   |  22 PagesHARLEM RENAISSANCE by William R. Nash ^ The term ‘‘Harlem Renaissance’’ refers to the efï ¬â€šorescence of African-American cultural production that occurred in New York City in the 1920s and early 1930s. One sometimes sees Harlem Renaissance used interchangeably with ‘‘New Negro Renaissance,’’ a term that includes all African Americans, regardless of their location, who participated in this cultural revolution. Followers of the New Negro dicta, which emphasized blacks’ inclusion in and empowerment