born Sept. 15, 1890, Jamaica, British West Indies
died May 22, 1948, Chicago, Ill., U.S.
Jamaican-born U.S. poet and novelist.
He published two volumes of Jamaican dialect verse before moving to the U.S. in 1912. With the publication of the poetry volumes Spring in New Hampshire (1920) and Harlem Shadows (1922), he emerged as the first and most militant voice of the Harlem Renaissance . An advocate of civil rights and racial solidarity, in his writings he searched among the common people for a distinctive black identity. His Home to Harlem (1928) was the most popular novel by an American black to that time. He lived abroad in various countries from 1922 to 1934.