Aim for FiveAfrican American Studies

Short answer: text source

Claude McKay's “If We Must Die”

  • Unit 3
  • 4 points
  • About 14 minutes

You read one written source (sometimes two closely related ones) and answer three or four short parts: what the source says, its historical context, and connections to related course content. On the exam: Section II, short-answer question 1 of 3 (required); the three short-answer questions share a suggested 40 minutes and are 18% of the score. In 2025 and 2026 this question had 4 parts (A–D).

The question and its sources

Read the source, then answer parts A, B, C and D. Write a few complete sentences for each part; you don't need a thesis. Claude McKay was a Jamaican-born poet living in the United States. The poem first appeared in the magazine The Liberator in July 1919.

Source

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 accursèd 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!

[Inglorious: shameful. Constrained: forced.]

Source: Claude McKay, “If We Must Die,” first published in The Liberator, July 1919; text from McKay, Harlem Shadows (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1922)

Suggested time: 14 minutes

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Part (A)

1 point

Describe one claim McKay makes in the poem.

0 / 2,500 characters

Part (B)

1 point

Describe the historical context of the poem.

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Part (C)

1 point

Explain one way African Americans organized to resist racial violence between 1890 and 1930, other than the armed self-defense described in the poem.

0 / 2,500 characters

Part (D)

1 point

Explain how the Great Migration changed the political or cultural life of African Americans in Northern cities between 1910 and 1940.

0 / 2,500 characters

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