Claude McKay (born September 15, 1889, Nairne Castle, Jamaica, British West Indies—died May 22, 1948, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.) was a Jamaican-born American poet and novelist who was one of the leading voices of the Harlem Renaissance. His book Home to Harlem (1928) was the most popular novel written by a Black American author to that time. Before moving to the United States in 1912, he wrote two volumes of Jamaican dialect verse, Songs of Jamaica and Constab Ballads (1912).
