In 1977, the government of Jamaica named Claude McKay the national poet and posthumously awarded him the Order of Jamaica for his contribution to literature.[41][42]
In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Claude McKay on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.[43] McKay is regarded as the "foremost left-wing black intellectual of his age" and his work heavily influenced a generation of black authors including James Baldwin and Richard Wright.[44]
In 2015, a passageway in Marseilles was named after McKay.[45]
Claude McKay's poem "If We Must Die" was recited in the film August 28: A Day in the Life of a People, which debuted at the opening of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture in 2016.[46][47][48]
