Claude McKay

Claude McKay was born in Jamaica, West Indies, in 1889. He was educated by his older brother, who possessed a library of English novels, poetry, and scientific texts. At the age of twenty, McKay published a book of verse called Songs of Jamaica, recording his impressions of black life in Jamaica in dialect. In 1912, he travelled to the United States to attend Tuskegee Institute. He remained there only a few months, leaving to study agriculture at Kansas State University. He published two sonnets, "The Harlem Dancer" and "Invocation," in 1917, and would later use the same poetic form to record his reactionary views on the injustices of black life in America. In addition to social and political concerns, McKay wrote on a variety of subjects, from his Jamaican homeland to romantic love, with a use of passionate language.

During the twenties, McKay developed an interest in Communism and travelled to Russia and then to France where he met Edna St. Vincent Millay and Sinclair Lewis. In 1934, McKay moved back to the United States and lived in Harlem, New York. Losing faith in Communism, he turned his attention to the teachings of various spiritual and political leaders in Harlem, eventually converting to Catholicism. McKay's viewpoints and poetic achievements in the earlier part of the twentieth century set the tone for the Harlem Renaissance and gained the deep respect of younger black poets of the time, including Langston Hughes. He died in 1948.

America

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,And sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth,Stealing my breath of life, I will confess

I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,

Giving me strength erect against her hate.Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.

Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state,I stand within her walls with not a shred

Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,

And see her might and granite wonders there,Beneath the touch of Time's unerring hand,Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

If We Must Die

If we must die, let it not be like hogsHunted and penned in an inglorious spot,

While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,Making their mock at our accursed lot.

If we must die, O let us nobly die,So that our precious blood may not be shed

In vain; then even the monsters we defyShall be constrained to honor us though dead!

O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,

And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow!What though before us lies the open grave?

Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

Countee Cullen

(1903-1946)

For a Poet

I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth,And laid them away in a box of gold;

Where long will cling the lips of the moth,I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth;

I hide no hate; I am not even wrothWho found earth's breath so keen and cold;I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth,

And laid them away in a box of gold.

Countee Cullen

(1903-1946)

For a Poet

I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth,And laid them away in a box of gold;

Where long will cling the lips of the moth,I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth;

I hide no hate; I am not even wrothWho found earth's breath so keen and cold;I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth,

And laid them away in a box of gold.

Langston Hughes

James Langston Hughes was born February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. His parents divorced when he was a small child, and his father moved to Mexico. He was raised by his grandmother until he was thirteen, when he moved to Lincoln, Illinois, to live with his mother and her husband, eventually settling in Cleveland, Ohio.

In November 1924, he moved to Washington, D.C. Hughes first book of poetry, The Weary Blues, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1926. He finished his college education at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania three years later.

Hughes, who claimed Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg, and Walt Whitman as his primary influences, is particularly known for his insightful, colorful portrayals of black life in America from the twenties through the sixties.

He wrote novels, short stories and plays, as well as poetry, and is also known for his engagement with the world of jazz and the influence it had on his writing, as in Montage of a Dream Deferred. Hughes refused to differentiate between his personal experience and the common experience of black America. He wanted to tell the stories of his people in ways that reflected their actual culture, including both their suffering and their love of music, laughter, and language itself.

Langston Hughes died of complications from prostate cancer in May 22, 1967, in New York.

Dream Deferred

What happens to a dream deferred?Does it dry up

Like a raisin in the sun?Or fester like a sore--

And then run?Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over--like a syrupy sweet?Maybe it just sagslike a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

Children's Rhymes

By what sendsthe white kids

I ain't sent:I know I can't

be President. What don't bugthem white kidssure bugs me:

We know everybodyain't free.

Lies written downfor white folks

ain't for us a-tall:Liberty And Justice--

Huh!--For All?

I, Too, Sing America

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen When company comes, But I laugh, And eat well, And grow

strong.

Tomorrow, I'll be at the table When company comes.

Nobody'll dare Say to me, "Eat in the kitchen," Then. Besides, They'll see how beautiful I am

And be ashamed-- I, too, am America.

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

I've known rivers: I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the

flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln

went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I've known rivers: Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

Langston Hughes

James Langston Hughes was born February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. His parents divorced when he was a small child, and his father moved to Mexico. He was raised by his grandmother until he was thirteen, when he moved to Lincoln, Illinois, to live with his mother and her husband, eventually settling in Cleveland, Ohio.

In November 1924, he moved to Washington, D.C. Hughes first book of poetry, The Weary Blues, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1926. He finished his college education at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania three years later.

Hughes, who claimed Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg, and Walt Whitman as his primary influences, is particularly known for his insightful, colorful portrayals of black life in America from the twenties through the sixties.

He wrote novels, short stories and plays, as well as poetry, and is also known for his engagement with the world of jazz and the influence it had on his writing, as in Montage of a Dream Deferred. Hughes refused to differentiate between his personal experience and the common experience of black America. He wanted to tell the stories of his people in ways that reflected their actual culture, including both their suffering and their love of music, laughter, and language itself.

Langston Hughes died of complications from prostate cancer in May 22, 1967, in New York.

Jean Toomer

Jean Toomer was born in 1894 in Washington, D.C, the son of a Georgian farmer. Though he passed for white during certain periods of his life, he was raised in a predominantly black community and attended black high schools. In 1914, he began college at the University of Wisconsin but transferred to the College of the City of New York and studied there until 1917. In 1921, Toomer took a teaching job in Georgia and remained there four months; the trip represented his journey back to his Southern roots. His experience inspired his book Cane, a book of prose poetry describing the Georgian people and landscape. In the early twenties, Toomer became interested in Unitism, a religion founded by the Armenian George Ivanovich Gurdjieff. The doctrine taught unity, transcendence and mastery of self through yoga: all of which appealed to Toomer, a light-skinned black man preoccupied with establishing an identity in a society of rigid race distinctions. He began to preach the teachings of Gurdjieff in Harlem and later moved downtown into the white community. From there, he moved to Chicago to create a new branch of followers. Toomer was married twice to wives who were white, and was criticized by the black community for leaving Harlem and rejecting his roots for a life in the white world; however, he saw himself as an individual living above the boundaries of race. His meditations center around his longing for racial unity, as illustrated by his long poem "Blue Meridian." He died in 1967.

The TeacherBy Leslie Pinckney Hill

Lord, who am I to teach the wayTo little children day by day,

So prone myself to go astray?

I teach them KNOWLEDGE, but I knowHow faint they flicker and how low

The candles of my knowledge glow.

I teach them POWER to will and do,But only now to learn anew

My own great weakness through and through.

I teach them LOVE for all mankindAnd all God's creatures, but I findMy love comes lagging far behind.

Lord, if their guide I still must be,Oh let the little children see

The teacher leaning hard on Thee.

HatredBy Gwendolyn Bennett

I shall hate youLike a dart of singing steel

Shot through still airAt even-tide,Or solemnly

As pines are soberWhen they stand etched

Against the sky.Hating you shall be a game

Played with cool handsAnd slim fingers.

Your heart will yearnFor the lonely splendor

Of the pine treeWhile rekindled fires

In my eyesShall wound you like swift arrows.

Memory will lay its handsUpon your breast

And you will understandMy hatred.

A PrayerBy Joseph S. Cotter, Jr.

As I lie in bed,Flat on my back;

There passes across my ceilingAn endless panorama of things –

Quick steps of gay-voiced children,Adolescence in its wondering silences,

Maid and man on moonlit summer's eve,Women in the holy glow of Motherhood,Old men gazing silently thru the twilight

Into the beyond.O God, give me words to make my dream-children live.