A Harlem Mans Yearning

A Harlem Man’s Yearning

The Harlem Renaissance was a time in our nations

history when a new kind of insurgency developed. In this era, African Americans were for the first time considered artists, not just Negroes. In the midst of all of this was Claude McKay. Born and raised in the tropics of Jamaica, Claude grew up in a very accepting society. However, moving to America he experienced first hand the harsh realities of racism. In McKay’s time, people loved his poems; he was adored by Blacks and Whites alike. However, his likeability can be attributed to his style of poetry. His writings express a yearning he feels for something that has yet to be fulfilled. This yearning is expressed in a plethora of ways, from longing to be back in Jamaica, to social reform; McKay wants something that simply is not happening.

Claude McKay was born in Jamaica in 1889. It was not until 1912 that he came to the United States, and at that time had already published two books of poetry written in the Jamaican language. He eventually settled in New York where he became part of what is now known as the Harlem Renaissance movement, a movement which consisted of an emergence of new black cultural ideas, arts, and music. At the same time, he was involved in Greenwich Village's white radical circles. McKay was not actually in Harlem for most of the '20s, because actually spending time in England, Soviet Russia, France, and northern Africa before he returned to the United States in 1934. He died in Chicago in poverty and obscurity in 1948.

One of McKay’s most blatant forms of yearning was expressed