Claude McKay

Festus Claudius “Claude” McKay was a Jamaican-American writer and poet and was a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance. Born in Jamaica, McKay first traveled to the United States to attend college, and encountered W. E. B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk which grew McKay’s interest in political involvement. 

He moved to New York City in 1914 and in 1919 he wrote “If We Must Die”, one of his best-known works, a widely reprinted sonnet responding to the wave of white-on-black race riots and lynchings following the conclusion of the First World War.

Throughout his lifetime, McKay wrote over a dozen books, both fiction and non-fiction, and collections of poetry. Whilst McKay never “came out”, likely because bisexuality was incredibly taboo during his lifetime, he was known to have relationships with both men and women and included many themes of bisexuality in his written works.