Claude McKay

Festus Claudius McKay (Claude McKay) was born on September 15, 1889 in Clarendon, Jamaica. McKay was a big figure in the Harlem Renaissance. At the age of 10, he was an avid reader and because of that he began to write poetry. McKay moves to the United States in 1912 at the age of 23. He had not become a U.S. citizen until 1940. McKay had attended Booker T. Washington Tuskegee Institute and Kansas State University. He did not stay in the college long because he was so shock of the racism in this country in which had inspired him to right more poems. The first poetry book he published was Song of Jamaica. In 1914 he move to New York, were he had married his childhood sweetheart Eulalie Lewars. While living in New York he wrote Home to Harlem, Banjo, and Ginger town, and Banana Bottom. McKay had died of a heart attack on May 22, 1948 at the age of 59.