Claude McKay
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Object Details
- Artist
- Berenice Abbott, 17 Jul 1898 - 9 Dec 1991
- Sitter
- Claude McKay, 15 Sep 1889 - 22 May 1948
- Exhibition Label
- Born Sunny Ville, Jamaica
- Melding lyric poetic forms with the bitter realities of racism in Jamaica and the United States seemed an unlikely combination. But poet-novelist Claude McKay (1889–1948) made it work, and Harlem Shadows (1922), his fourth collection of poems, is regarded as a major catalyst in unleashing the cultural ferment of the Harlem Renaissance. Of the poems in Harlem Shadows, the best remembered is “If We Must Die.” First published in the socialist journal the Liberator, it was inspired by the rash of race riots across the United States in 1919, and it closes with these lines:
- Like men we’ll face the murderous cowardly pack,
- Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
- Those eloquently defiant words made this poem a call to action for emerging civil rights activists in the United States and for international leaders, such as Winston Churchill. Here, the U.S. photographer Berenice Abbott has portrayed the peripatetic McKay in Paris.
- Nacido en Sunny Ville, Jamaica
- Fundir la poesía lírica con la amarga realidad del racismo en Jamaica y Estados Unidos parecería tarea improbable, pero el poeta y novelista Claude McKay (1889–1948) la efectuó con éxito. Sombras de Harlem (1922), su cuarta colección de poemas, se considera un importante catalizador en la eclosión cultural del Renacimiento de Harlem. Entre esos poemas, el más recordado es “Si hemos de morir”, estrenado en la revista socialista The Liberator e inspirado por los numerosos disturbios raciales de 1919. Termina así:
- Como hombres enfrentaremos a la jauría cobarde y asesina,
- empujados contra la pared, muriendo, ¡pero luchando!
- Estas palabras de elocuencia desafiante convirtieron al poema en un llamado a la acción para el naciente movimiento pro derechos civiles en EE.UU. y para líderes internacionales como Winston Churchill. La fotógrafa estadounidense Berenice Abbott retrató al inquieto viajero McKay en París.
- Credit Line
- National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
- 1926
- Object number
- NPG.77.266
- Restrictions & Rights
- Usage conditions apply
- Copyright
- © Berenice Abbott/Getty Images
- Type
- Photograph
- Medium
- Gelatin silver print
- Dimensions
- Image: 16.5 × 12.3 cm (6 1/2 × 4 13/16")
- Sheet: 16.5 × 12.9 cm (6 1/2 × 5 1/16")
- Mat: 45.7 × 35.6 cm (18 × 14")
- See more items in
- National Portrait Gallery Collection
- Location
- Currently not on view
- National Portrait Gallery
- Topic
- Interior
- Costume\Dress Accessory\Scarf
- Personal Attribute\Teeth
- Claude McKay: Male
- Claude McKay: Literature\Writer\Poet
- Claude McKay: Journalism and Media\Magazine editor
- Claude McKay: Literature\Writer\Novelist
- Portrait
- Record ID
- npg_NPG.77.266
- Metadata Usage (text)
- Usage conditions apply
- GUID (Link to Original Record)
- http://n2t.net/ark:/65665/sm4e50fe57e-1293-4564-893d-d54424aefb92
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