Historical Context of Invisible Man (GBA)

Claude McKay

Claude McKay wrote poems that responded to the racism prevalent in the lives of African Americans. He wrote about the daily obstacles of ordinary people, and his poetry is said to be some of the greatest of the time because it spoke like art. McKay's skillfully written observations showed the world that he was ready for equality between the races.

Enslaved

Oh when I think of my long-suffering race,

For weary centuries despised, oppressed,

Enslaved and lynched, denied a human place

In the great life line of the Christian West;

And in the Black Land disinherited,

Robbed in the ancient country of its birth,

My heart grows sick with hate, becomes as lead,

For this my race that has no home on earth.

Then from the dark depths of my soul I cry

To the avenging angel to consume

The white man's world of wonders utterly:

Let it be swallowed up in earth's vast womb,

Or upward roll as sacrificial smoke

To liberate my people from its yoke!

http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/pictures/claude_mckay.jpg

On September 15th, Festus Claudius McKay was born to two Jamaican farmers. He, being the youngest of 11, was sent to live with his older brother who was a teacher. Under his brother's instruction, Claude learned how to read and write, and by the age of eleven, he was writing poetry. In 1907 Claude met Walter Jekyll, an English gentleman living in Jamaica, who became his mentor. Jekyll had the idea of setting some of Claude's poems to music. By the time Claude moved to America in 1912, he was an established poet and had published two volumes of dialect verse.

Claude enrolled at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Little did he know the extent of American racism and was shocked when he abruptly encountered it. This issue enabled him to write several poems that not only enthralled a nation but started a career. His poetry was a form of protest against the racial violence that was taking place. Throughout the 1920's, his career was booming, and some of his work was quoted by Winston Churchill during WWII. He was a recognized and well respected poet whose forward poems about the underbelly of Harlem jarred the nation.

McKay traveled all around the world to England, Africa and the Soviet Union. However, due to his financial situation, he was forced to return to America. By this time, it was the 1930's and he was no longer being published or praised. He blamed the failure of his career on his race. High blood pressure and heart disease led toward McKay's imminent death, and he abandoned his lifelong agnosticism and embraced Catholicism. In May 1948, he succumbed to congestive heart failure in Chicago.