Bom in Jamaica in 1890, Claude McKay immigrated to America at the age of twentytwo to study scientific farming at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. He transferred to Kansas State College before he left school altogether in 1914 and moved to New York. Settling in Harlem, McKay worked at menial jobs while writing poetry, as he had done before leaving Jamaica. He wrote colorfully about Harlem, describing its cabarets, jazz scene, and community life during the World War I era. In 1922 McKay left the United States, partly to escape "the suffocating ghetto of color consciousness" (Anderson, p. 221). He professed to have gained precious perspective on his experiences while abroad, which allowed him to do his best writing on Harlem. Written during this time, Home to Harlem draws on McKay's memories of the black American community.
Northern migration. In Home to Harlem, the main character, Jake, recounts the migration northward of his friend Zeddy, who originally lived in Petersburg, Virginia. Between 1916 and 1930, nearly one million African Americans made such a move, leaving their homes in the South to migrate to northern cities such as New York and Chicago.
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