Claude McKay's Birthplace

Parish: Clarendon

Claude McKay, internationally acclaimed writer and poet, was born in the year 1889 in James Hill, Clarendon. Upon completing elementary school he was apprenticed to a cabinetmaker and wheelwright in Browns Town, St. Ann. In 1910 he went to Kingston, where he joined the island's constabulary force. His stint, in the force, though short, was not without its adventure. In 1912 his first volumes of poems, Songs of Jamaica and Constab Ballads, for which he was awarded the Silver Musgrave Medal of the Institute of Jamaica, were published. He migrated to the United States where he became one of the leading writers of the HARLEM NEGRO RENAISSANCE. In 1948 McKay died in Chicago and was buried in New York.

In 1977 the Government on behalf of the people of Jamaica posthumously awarded Claude McKay the Order of Jamaica in respect and admiration for his great contribution to literature.