The White House

“If We Must Die” by Claude McKay (1919)

It may be difficult to square the cautious, elegant voice heard in “The White House” with the voice heard here. This sonnet, written at the same time as “The White House” and also appearing in The Liberator, reveals a far more strident and angrier McKay and thus could be read as a response to the questions that he raises in “The White House” but refuses to answer. The poem is an inspirational, defiant call to arms. The poem understands and makes heroic the need for Black rebellion—“If we must die, let it not be like hogs” (Line 1)—and insists that if the Black race asserts its right to exist in white America it does so with pride and with integrity, together. White people are called “the common foe,” a “murderous and cowardly pack” (Lines 9, 13).

“I, Too” by Langston Hughes (1926)

Written by one of the most iconic figures in the Harlem Renaissance, “I, Too” expresses the sense of Black community, that Black people, if they are ever to secure their civil rights must do so together. In addition, like McKay’s speaker, Hughes argues that Black people are part of America despite segregation.