Claude McKay was born on September 15th 1890, in the West Indian island of Jamaica. He was the youngest of eleven children. At the age of ten, he wrote a rhyme of acrostic for an elementary-school gala. He then changed his style and mixed West Indian folk songs with church hymns. At the age of seventeen he met a gentlemen named Walter Jekyll, who encouraged him to write in his native dialect. Jekyll introduced him to a new world of literature. McKay soon left Jamaica and would never return to his homeland.
In 1912, only 23 years old, Jekyll paid his way to the United Sates to study agriculture at Tuskegee Institute. Before leaving Jamaica, McKay had gotten a reputation as a poet. He had produced two volumes of dialect poetry, Song of Jamaica and Constab Ballads. His work is said to always echo both the British colony's musical dialect and the sharp anger of its subject race. McKay moved to Harlem, New York in 1914, during a very discriminating time. His first American poem......

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Title: Claude Mckay & Jean Toomer
Approximate Word Count: 694
Approximate Pages: 3 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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