Claude McKay: The Making of a Black Bolshevik

by Winston James

One of the foremost Black writers and intellectuals of his era, Claude McKay (1889–1948) was a central figure in Caribbean literature, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Black radical tradition. McKay’s life and writing were defined by his class consciousness and anticolonialism, shaped by his experiences growing up in colonial Jamaica as well as his early career as a writer in Harlem and then London. Dedicated to confronting both racism and capitalist exploitation, he was a critical observer of the Black condition throughout the African diaspora and became a committed Bolshevik.

 Winston James offers a revelatory account of McKay’s political and intellectual trajectory from his upbringing in Jamaica through the early years of his literary career and radical activism. In 1912, McKay left Jamaica to study in the United States, never to return. James follows McKay’s time at the Tuskegee Institute and Kansas State University, as he discovered the harshness of American racism, and his move to Harlem, where he encountered the ferment of Black cultural and political movements and figures such as Hubert Harrison and Marcus Garvey. McKay left New York for London, where his commitment to revolutionary socialism deepened, culminating in his transformation from Fabian socialist to Bolshevik. 

Interview with the Author

Biographers International Organization 
Podcast Episode #111 – Winston James
12/9/22           30 min

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New Books Network 
Winston James, “Claude McKay: The Making of a Black Bolshevik” (Columbia UP, 2022)
2/11/23          113 min

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Millennials Are Killing Capitalism 
“If We Must Die, Let It Not Be Like Hogs” – Winston James on Claude McKay: The Making of a Black Bolshevik (part 1)
10/22/22           61 min

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Millenials Are Killing Capitalism 
Battering Down The Wall From Both Sides – Winston James on Claude McKay: The Making of a Black Bolshevik (part 2)
10/30/22          66 min

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