Claude McKay Publishes 'If We Must Die,' Defining New Negro Resistance Ethos

Harlem Renaissance poet Claude McKay published 'If We Must Die' in The Liberator in July 1919, directly responding to the Red Summer massacres. The sonnet's call — 'If we must die, let it not be like hogs / Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot' — articulated an ethos of armed, dignified resistance that defined the New Negro movement. The poem circulated in Black communities across the country and was later, without attribution, read by Winston Churchill to Congress to inspire British resistance against Nazi Germany.