If We Must Die 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!

This started his regular involvement with Workers' Dreadnought and the Workers' Socialist Federation a Council Communist group active in the East End and which had a majority of women involved in it at all levels of the organization. The article about his co-editor position was found in The Chicago Defender. McKay's original English manuscripts have been lost.

McKay was attracted to communism in his early life but he was never a member of the Communist Party. McKay also authored a collection of short stories Gingertown (1932) two autobiographical books A Long Way from Home (1937) and My Green Hills of Jamaica (publiClaude McKayd posthumously) and a non-fiction socio-historical treatise entitled Harlem: Negro Metropolis (1940).