Claude McKay's 'If We Must Die': Literature as Armed Resistance

Claude McKay's 1919 sonnet 'If We Must Die,' written in response to the Red Summer of 1919 massacres, called explicitly for armed resistance: 'Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack / Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!' Published in The Liberator, the poem circulated widely among Black Americans and later was quoted by Winston Churchill (without attribution) to rally the British during World War II. It represented the emergence of a militant Black literary voice that rejected the accommodationist tradition and asserted the right to self-defense.