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Claude McKay

1889-1948 JM, Clarendon Parish, Jamaica

A.k.a. Festus Claudius McKay

Born September 15, 1889 in Nairne Castle near James Hill, Clarendon, Jamaica. Died May 22, 1948 in Chicago Illinois. Festus Claudius "Claude" McKay was a Jamaican-American writer and poet, who was a seminal figure in the Harlem Renaissance. McKay was the author of collectionsof poetry, a collection of short stories, two autobiographical books, A Long Way from Home (1937) and My Green Hills of Jamaica (published posthumously), and a non-fiction, socio-historical treatise entitled Harlem: Negro Metropolis (1940). His 1922 poetry collection, Harlem Shadows, was among the first books published during the Harlem Renaissance. From November 1922 to June 1923, he visited the Soviet Union and attended the fourth congress of the Communist International in Moscow. He detailed his experience in Russia in the essay "Soviet Russia and the Negro" published in the December 1923 issue of The Crisis Magazine. McKay wrote the manuscripts for a book of essays called Negroes in America and three stories published as Lynching in America, both of which appeared first in Russian and were re-translated into English. His Selected Poems was published posthumously, in 1953.

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