Born in Jamaica, Claude McKay came to America to study at Tuskegee Institute but found both the racial prejudice in Alabama and the strict regimen on campus intolerable enough to leave for Kansas State University. He moved to New York City in 1917 and became friends with Hubert Harrison, founder of the Liberty League and editor of The Voice, and with Max Eastman, publisher of the radical magazine The Liberator. In July 1919 The Liberator published seven of McKay’s poems, including “If We Must Die” and “The Little Peoples.” Anti-colonialists’ hopes that the peace conference might lead to self-determination for African peoples dimmed as the former German colonies became spoils divided among the victors in the form of League of Nations mandates.
The little peoples of the troubled earth,
The little nations that are weak and white;—
For them the glory of another birth,
For them the lifting of the veil of night.
The big men of the world in concert met,
Have sent forth in their power a new decree:
Upon the old harsh wrongs the sun must set,
Henceforth the little peoples must be free!
But we, the blacks, less than the trampled dust,
Who walk the new ways with the old dim eyes,—
We to the ancient gods of greed and lust
Must still be offered up as sacrifice:
Oh, we who deign to live but will not dare,
The white world’s burden must forever bear!