Three Harlem Renaissance Writers (Hughes, McKay, & Cullen)

From there, Claude McKay traveled to Alabama to study field-crop production, but became disenchanted with it. He traveled to Harlem in 1914, eventually joining a black writer's group which revolted, "against white cultural standards by seeking to write works reflecting the lives of the black masses." In Harlem, McKay associated with like minds: socialists, African Blood Brotherhood members, and even became friends with the executive secretary of the NAACP. He was deeply affected by the institutionalized racism, following the United States' civil unrest at the end of the war. McKay wrote "If We Must Die," and the Liberator published it in 1919.

"If We Must Die" follows an alternating rhyme scheme, and has 14 lines (a sonnet). It deals with honorable death. Back in those times, lynchings and other such torturous persecution were still a reality for an African-American. McKay starts his poem with, "If we must die, let it not be like hogs..." He goes on to describe methods of death which would be dishonorable (being 'hunted', 'penned', and surrounded by barking dogs that mock disgrace). "Let us nobly die, So that our precious blood may not be shed/In vain." He pleas for honor and bravery in death, even if he's strongly outnumbered. Let the murderers be the "cowardly pack," and face death with dignity' he tells his people. It was revolutionary to his readers, and rallied them to fight back against their oppression.

McKay was also well traveled, but he did most of his trekking AFTER Harlem. He visited Liverpool, England, to continue his political agenda, funded by two of his poetry admirers. Berlin was next on the timeline for McKay, then to Moscow. He also spoke about racial issues in such cities as Paris, Morocco, and North Africa. After he finished his journeys, he wrote an autobiography: A Long Way From Home. He was an influence on Langston Hughes, and, "one of the main stimulators of the Negritude Movement--...a literary movement whose proponents try to classify a black-based, African-based aesthetic founded on what the writers and poets of the Harlem Renaissance created."

Langston Hughes had a taste for Jazz, and it was played at his funeral in 1967. Cullen's last line in Yet Do I Marvel may have been a warning aimed at Hughes to, "avoid black jazz rhythms in his

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