McKay, Claude Festus Claudius McKay (September 15, 1890 – May 22, 1948) was a Jamaican-American writer and poet, and a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance. Born in Jamaica, McKay first traveled to the United States to attend college, and encountered W.E.B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk which stimulated McKay’s interest in political involvement. He moved to New York City in 1914 and in 1919 wrote "If We Must Die", one of his best known works, a widely reprinted sonnet responding to the wave of white-on-black race riots and lynchings following the conclusion of the First World War.
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