Quotes from work
If We Must Die

"If We Must Die" is a poem by Claude McKay published in the July 1919 issue of The Liberator. McKay wrote the poem as a response to mob attacks by white Americans upon African-American communities during Red Summer. The poem was reprinted in The Messenger and the Workers' Dreadnought later that year. The poem was also read to Congress that year by Henry Cabot Lodge, the Republican Senator from Massachusetts.


Claude McKay photo
Claude McKay photo

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