Upon the clothes behind the tenement, That hang like ghosts suspended from the lines, Linking each flat, but to each indifferent, Incongruous and strange the moonlight shines.

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).