SOURCE: LeSeur, Geta. “Claude McKay's Marxism.” In The Harlem Renaissance: Revaluations, by Amritjit Singh, William S. Shiver, and Stanley Brodwin, pp. 219-31. New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1989.

In the following essay, LeSeur explores the impact of Marxism on the works of Claude McKay.

Claude McKay remains today part of the acknowledged literary triumvirate of the Harlem Renaissance. He shares this prestigious position with Langston Hughes and Jean Toomer. Each in his own way made a lasting contribution to Afro-American literature and politics because of the uniqueness each possessed. McKay, however, was perhaps the most controversial of the three, because of his involvement with Marxism early in his career. The two primary dilemmas of McKay's life were as follows: the first was to resolve for himself whether socialism indeed was the answer to the “Negro question”; the second, the role of the black artist in a society...