Author: Rob Perrée
Claude McKay & Charles Ashleigh
This is the last article in a series of articles on the friendship between ‘two’ African American artists, a “friendship beyond understanding”. In every article The Harlem Renaissance is the context of the story. This article is about the friendship between the poet and novelist Claude McKay and the activist poet Charles Ashleigh.
Rob Perrée tries to answer the questions the friendship evokes.
Girmachew Getnet
I come from a country, Ethiopia, that was never colonized. I want to pass on my love and respect to my companions who went to war against colonization and defeated Italy. Today I am proud of these people and being Ethiopian, but I have never forgotten that I am also African. And the rest of Africa was colonized. People in the colonized countries lost their original name, tradition, culture, language and religion. All this has been changed by Western cultures.