It is clear that within all of these works by these African American writers that the main struggle is with equality. Common themes within these works are brutality, segregation, and violence. These works are outlets for these writers to voice their concerns about these topics. If We Must Die by Claude McKay is essentially a call to arms for marginalized African Americans. This work highlights the problems that were going on during the race wars of this time period. Essentially, this work is basically saying that African Americans were persecuted against and pushed around for far too long held down and it was time to take a stand. The vocabulary in poem is particularly interesting because it is very similar to what would be said to soldiers
