By Milan Rei Booker ’25
A search for home is something that is timeless, something that every individual desires: a place where they feel that they belong. This desire was prevalent in Black Americans, especially during and after the Great Migration, in which around one million Black Southerners migrated to the North due to racial terror by 1919. This mass migration North led to the development of various communities, one of them being in New York City in a neighborhood named Harlem, commonly referenced as the Black mecca during this period. What made Harlem known as such was its uniqueness as a place teeming with elements of culture, like art, music, literature, and knowledge, shared between members of the Black diaspora. Harlem was a mecca because it existed as a haven where many of the diaspora fled in search of new beginnings, and, as a result, it flourished. In the book Home to Harlem, Claude McKay demonstrates that Black women are an embodiment of home, despite being poorly treated. I argue that the main plights that Black women face in Home to Harlem — the backbone of their community — are their underappreciation, the burden of being providers for Black men, and the measure of their value by beauty. I also argue that Haiti and Harlem symbolized Black women as the “home” of Black men.
Throughout the book, Black women are portrayed as the foundation of the Black community. They were symbolized as sources of support, especially economically, because they provided Black men with a home. However, some of the Black women beg to be loved and appreciated by the same men they are taking care of. As a result, Black women feel undervalued and unappreciated. Further, Harlem is personified as the Black woman, and there is a semi-destruction of Harlem as a mecca. A good example of this is Susy and Zeddy’s relationship. Susy wants to be loved and valued, but Zeddy just wants to live the “sweet” life. He has no interest in loving Susy but is fine with taking advantage of her. This “sweet life” means that Zeddy is taken care of in all aspects of his life, including shelter, food, sex, money, and so on. Zeddy admits that Susy treats him well. In the same breath, he talks about Susy in a degrading way by calling her a “crechur” and by stating, “Susy ain’t nothing to look at like you’ fair brown queen, but she’s tur’bly sweet loving” (1). Towards the end of Chapter 7, Zeddy is kicked out of Susy’s home because she catches him at a Harlem cabaret with another woman. When Zeddy realizes Susy caught him, he proceeds to tell Jake the following: “Ef that theah black ole cow come fooling near me tonight, I’ll show her who’s wearing the pants” (1). This is ironic coming from Zeddy, as Susy is, in fact, the one who is “wearing the pants” in their relationship, as she is the only one contributing to the household financially.
Claude McKay represents Black women in Harlem as being easy to use but hard to love and value. Only Felice is seen as “easy to love,” but Jake does not know her very well. It is also important to highlight that Ray values, loves, and respects his girlfriend Agatha, but there is still a disconnect between them. The non-conventionally attractive Black women seem to be “harder to love” because of their “lower level” of beauty, and this has an impact on how they are treated by the men in Harlem. This, in fact, is the plight of the Black woman, being valued by how she looks and not who she is and her role in the advancement of Black people. Elise Johnson McDougald, author of The Double Task, would not have liked to see Black women being portrayed in this manner. However, I think she would appreciate McKay’s acknowledgment of the pressure of beauty standards of Black women as she said herself that “…the attitude of mind of most New Yorkers causes the Negro woman serious difficulty. She is conscious that what is left of chivalry is not directed toward her. She realizes that the ideals of beauty, built up in the fine arts, exclude her almost entirely” (2). Here, I believe McDougald is discussing a similar topic to McKay about how a Black woman’s treatment is determined by her beauty and that these beauty standards are based on European ideals of beauty. These pressures are even more difficult to deal with coming from Black men, the individuals who are supposed to support and protect the women that have sacrificed their well-being for them. The Black women in Home to Harlem and The Double Task represent the desire of wanting to be valued. The inability of Black men to accomplish this is the downfall of Harlem.
Black women in Home to Harlem occupy different roles, but all of them, in some shape or form, involve serving Black men. The book seems to portray Black women as objects of desire and not as human beings. McDougald would most likely have an issue with this portrayal of Black women, especially because she would argue that Black women are the backbone of the Black community. I argue that Harlem began to become dangerous and started to crumble as a Black mecca because of the mistreatment of Black women. Although McDougald would dislike the portrayal of Black women in the book, Claude McKay is showing the consequences of undervaluing Black women. Therefore, the way in which Black women are portrayed in Home to Harlem is not an embodiment of McKay’s perspective of Black women, rather the opposite of what he believes. This is visible through the character of Ray. Ray is an embodiment of McKay’s thoughts and beliefs. Ray and Jake are not alike, as Ray is more progressive and educated. Ray’s treatment of Black women is correlated to his intelligence, consciousness, and experiences, as he understands how devaluing Black women can lead to the destruction of the home, an experience that contributes to his knowledge about why it is important to love, respect, and be loyal to Black women. When Jake meets Agatha, Ray’s girlfriend, he can see why Ray is in love with her. Jake begins to understand that this is a result of having a symbiotic romantic relationship filled with love, loyalty, and respect.
This intersects with respectability politics that everyone in the book struggles with, which also leads to the deterioration of Harlem as a Black mecca, as one cannot be pro-Black and have a thriving Black mecca without valuing and respecting everyone for their individuality. Pro-Blackness cannot thrive while a community is endorsing hegemonic Blackness. Respectability politics is a consequence of viewing individuals en masse. McDougald would agree with this idea, as she has stated the following in relation to Black women: “With a discerning mind, one catches the multiform charm, beauty, and character of Negro women; and grasps the fact that their problem cannot be thought of in mass” (2). McDougald would also be appreciative of McKay’s portrayal of a variety of Black women in their behavior, desires, and so on.
To dive deeper into the theory of why Ray seems to be the only character that understands the value of the Black woman, it is important to correlate it with him being Haitian. Ray has more intelligence concerning the subject of Black power and advancement because he is living the consequences of undervaluing Black women. Another theory that correlates with this is that Haiti and Harlem in this book are both embodiments of Black women and the Black woman’s plight. Ray sees with his own eyes the exploitation of Haiti by the West for Western purposes and values. Both the death of his father and brother are due to this exploitation of Haiti, or the Black woman. Like the Black woman, Haiti is being exploited and used for its resources. The West justifies this exploitation through its ideologies, and the Black men in Harlem also use Western ideologies to rationalize their exploitation of Black women. Because these relationships are not symbiotic, this is what leads to the exploitation of Black women and Haiti. This theory, in general, shows the dangers of Western ideologies’ expansion into Black thought and how Western ideologies will destroy Black homes. One way this destruction can manifest is through the lack of protection and value that Black men have for Black women. Because Harlem and Haiti (the Black woman) are not protected and valued enough by the Black man, they are diminished through the creation of tension. Regardless of the impact of Western ideologies, Ray is too conscious and intelligent to think this way. This is also why Ray, as a character, is unsettled because he is surrounded by the same thoughts that destroyed his home and killed his family. McDougald would agree with this theory as she identifies the following as one of the plights of Black women: “Pressure has been exerted upon her, both from without and within her group,” as the Black woman’s value is determined by what she can provide to others (2). In Harlem, there is the feeling of both loneliness and tension. Harlem is the Black woman.
Another piece of evidence from the book that Harlem is the Black woman is Jake’s eagerness to leave Harlem once he finds Felice, even though he risked his life and honor to return to Harlem, the home that he longed for. Throughout the book, we begin to realize that Harlem is not his home, the Black woman is, more specifically, Felice. This is a very traditional mindset of Black women being in the home, which is also contradictory to the portrayal of Black women as “breadwinners.” Something that should also be acknowledged is that Harlem is not, cannot, and will not be a true home for the Black diaspora due to where it is located, the United States of America. The same can be said about the American South and why Harlem was created in the first place – the Great Migration. Harlem is a place where Black people as a whole are undervalued and mistreated, as the United States is a place where Black people are oppressed and exploited. Therefore, Harlem cannot truly be a home for Black people because it is not entirely closed off from the forces that exploit and harm its people. This is why Jake has no problem with leaving because Harlem is not where he finds home, the Black woman (Felice) is. This also is why Jake had no problem leaving his White girlfriend in London. What makes Harlem home is the Black woman. The undervaluing of Black women leads to the tension that incites the violence that kills Jake’s father and brother and the violence that Harlem experiences towards the end of the book.
In conclusion, how the West views the treatment and value of women has impacted Harlem and Haiti as homes for the diaspora. Black women were the backbone of these communities, and the underappreciation and disrespect they experienced led to strain and tension in the Black community. I find it to be unsettling that on the surface, Black women are written to be only valued by looks and what they can provide (shelter, food, free booze, sex, et cetera), but that the underlying meaning of the book, one that you have to dig deep for, is the importance of the Black woman to the collective regarding Black freedom and Black prosperity. Some of the Black women are portrayed as burdens and undesirable, which makes my deep interpretation contradictory to how they are portrayed. Regardless, I believe that Jake represents the point of view of the general Black man en masse, and Ray represents McKay’s thoughts.
References
- Claude McKay, Home to Harlem (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1987 [1928]).
- Elise Johnson McDougald, “The Double Task: The Struggle of Negro Women for Sex and Race Emancipation,” in The New Negro: An Interpretation, ed. Alain Locke (New York: Albert and Charles Boni, 1925), 308.
Americana 