http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/mckay/mckay.htm
Unlike Cullen, Jamaican-born Claude McKay felt less inclined to deny the touch of Africa in their art. To the contrary, he felt strongly that the time had come for America to begin to recognize the uniqueness of Negro creativity and the many contributions Negroes made to American culture. In his bid for recognition, McKay continued the practice of drawing from the Sasa of the American Negro.
McKay was lauded for his use of Jamaican dialect in his first collection of poems, Songs of Jamaica . But it is in the powerful sonnet, "If We Must Die" that he established himself both as a formalist poet of fine sensibilities and a well-honed craft, and as an orator of the people, signifying the uncertainty of the black man in America :
If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! We must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
African American poets have always drawn from the Sasa, that vast well of material provided by the vernacular tradition. McKay's work is replete with images from his Sasa, images of daily life in the neighborhood of Harlem, the nexus for Negro art and culture. His work is also filled with reminders of the history and traditional values of the Negro people.