Claude McKay (1889-1948)

Claude McKay was born in Jamaica. His older Brother thought and educated him. His brother had a library of English novels, poetry and scientific texts. By the age of 20, McKay published a book called Songs of Jamaica, recording his impressions of black life in Jamaica in dialect.
He published two sonnets, "The Harlem Dancer" and "Invocation". McKay also wrote lots of subjects from his Jamaican homeland to romantic love with a passionate language. McKay was interested in Communism and travelled to Russia and to France. There he had met Edna St. Vincent Millay and Sinclair Lewis.

MyKay moved back to the USA in 1934 and lived in the African American neighbourhood, Harlem. He was one of the poets of the time with Langston Hughes, who set the tone for the Harlem Renaissance and also gained the deep respect of younger black poets.

Langston Hughes (1902-1967)

Langston Hughes was born on 1^st February in 1902 and died on 22^nd May in 1967. He was one of the most important writers of the Harlem Renaissance. Hughes's creative genius was influenced by his life in New York City's Harlem. Hughes poetry helped Americans literature and politics. Langston Hughes, and other activists of the Harlem Renaissance, had a strong sense of racial pride. Through his poetry, novels, plays, essays, children's books, condemned racism and injustice and celebrated African American culture, humour and spirituality.

The poem "I, Too, Sing America" by Langston Hughes is represented in the movie "The Great Debaters" (2007), starring Denzel Washington.

Countee Cullen (1903-1946)

Countee Cullens born as Countee LeRoy Porter was born in Louisville, Kentucy or Baltimore. This is said from different sources. Cullen was possibly abandoned by his mother and reared by a woman called Mrs Porter. She was probably his paternal grandmother.

Mrs. Porter brought Countee to Harlem, when he was nine years old. When he was fifteen years old, he was adopted by Reverend F.A. Cullen. (Minister of Salem M:E: Church, one of the largest congregations of Harlem. Reverend Cullen became later the head of the Harlem chapter of NAACP. His real mother just contacted him firstly, when he became famous in the 1920s.

Cullens poetry conveyed life. His collection is called "color" and was printed in 1925. The Harlem Renaissance was influenced by his work and put it to a new height because he had the ability to show social realities. It is said that he was criticized for being conventional, for using the British romantic poets as his models, and for insisting that poetry in general should be free of racial and political matters. However, in one of his finest poem, "Heritage", he shows his relationship to Africa.