LIT/A/1: IF WE MUST DIE. (Claude McKay)

Claude McKay was born in 1890 in Jamaica. He went to Kansas to study agriculture at the time when Ku Klux Klan was highly active. He was therefore forced to move to New York in 1914. In 1919 Washington DC newspaper gave stories of an alleged (suspected) sexual assault that was said to be committed by an African American. The stories sparked (caused) a series of twenty riots during the summer of 1919, beginning with white lynch mob (murderous group) that targeted blacks in Washington. There were 28 public lynchings (killings) in the first half of the year and the following summer and fall came to be known as “The Red Summer” of 1919. This was the motivation behind McKay’s “If We Must Die”