McKay, Claude

McKay, Claude (1889-1948), American writer, born in Jamaica (then a colony of Great Britain). One of the prominent figures of the Harlem Renaissance in black literature of the 1920s, he was known for his poems and novels of black life, first in Jamaica (Songs of Jamaica, 1911; and Constab Ballads, 1912) and later in the United States. After 1914 several of his poems were published in various American periodicals; they were primarily lyric works decrying injustice. After World War I McKay lived in England and France and visited the Soviet Union. He also served as an editor of and contributor to the left-wing periodicals The Liberator and The Masses.

McKay's first novel, Home to Harlem (1928), a vivid picture of black life in New York, was a popular success. Other novels by McKay include Banjo (1929), set on the waterfront of Marseille, and Banana Bottom (1933), about Jamaica. He wrote an autobiography, A Long Way from Home (1937), and a sociological study, Harlem: Negro Metropolis (1940). In 1942 he converted to Roman Catholicism and renounced his former radical philosophy.