McKay’s sonnet “If We Must Die” was first published in the July 1919 issue of The Liberator, becoming one of the most widely recognized literary responses to the racial violence of the Red Summer.
While based in London, McKay published Spring in New Hampshire and Other Poems (Grant Richards), an important bridge between his early verse and later Harlem Renaissance reception.
In London, McKay contributed to (and at times served as managing editor for) Sylvia Pankhurst’s radical newspaper Workers’ Dreadnought, aligning his literary work with labor and anti-imperialist politics.
After roughly two years abroad in Europe, McKay returned to the United States, re-entering New York literary and political networks that shaped his Harlem Renaissance-era publication opportunities.
McKay’s poetry collection Harlem Shadows (Harcourt, Brace) appeared in 1922 and is widely regarded as an early landmark volume of the Harlem Renaissance, helping establish his U.S. literary prominence.
In November 1922, McKay traveled to Soviet Russia to attend the Fourth Congress of the Communist International (Comintern), a high-profile episode in his Black internationalist and left political engagements.
Following his Soviet visit, McKay collaborated on a Russian-language publication commonly cited as The Negroes of America (1923), presenting a Marxist-inflected critique of U.S. racial capitalism for Soviet audiences.
McKay’s novel Home to Harlem was published in 1928, bringing mainstream commercial success while also provoking controversy for its frank portrayal of Harlem nightlife and working-class Black life.
McKay followed Home to Harlem with Banjo (1929), a transnational novel centered on Black seamen and port life in Marseilles, extending Harlem Renaissance concerns into diasporic modernity and political critique.
In 1933, McKay published Banana Bottom, a Jamaica-set novel that imaginatively revisited his homeland and explored cultural conflict, class, and identity beyond Harlem-centered narratives.
McKay returned to Harlem in 1934 and clashed with the Stalinist Communist Party milieu in New York, reflecting his increasingly critical stance toward party discipline and political control over Black cultural production.
McKay’s autobiography A Long Way from Home was published in 1937, recounting his travels and political engagements and offering a major firsthand perspective on the era’s Black radicalism and Harlem Renaissance cultural politics.
Claude McKay: From Home to Harlem to Political Activism (1919–1935)
