Claude McKay Publishes 'Home to Harlem'—First Black Novel on Bestseller List

Claude McKay's novel 'Home to Harlem,' published in 1928, became the first novel by a Black American author to reach the national bestseller list. The novel's frank portrayal of working-class Black Harlem—its jazz clubs, sexuality, and street life—divided opinion within the Black community (Du Bois famously said it made him feel unclean) but established the legitimacy of gritty realism in Black fiction alongside the more genteel Harlem Renaissance tradition.