pba00342 The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar (Dodd, Mead & Co., 1921)

As an African American literary genius in late nineteenth-century America, Paul Laurence Dunbar engaged in a constant tug-of-war between honoring his heritage and pleasing a predominantly white readership.

In some ways, he won. He was the first black writer in the country make a living at his art and the first to attain national prominence as a poet. He also inspired scores of African Americans during and after his short lifetime. However, the ignorance of his versatility by those who focused on his dialectic poetry and the criticism heaped upon him by those who believed he perpetuated a negative stereotype would haunt him to his dying day.

The Son of Slaves
Dunbar’s roots run deep into mid-nineteenth century slave culture. His father, Joshua Dunbar, had escaped from slavery to freedom in Canada via the Underground Railroad, but he returned to serve the Union in the 55th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment and the 5th Massachusetts Colored Cavalry Regiment during the Civil War.

pba02276 In Old Plantation Days (Dodd, Mead & Co., 1903)

His mother, Matilda Murphy Dunbar, had been born into slavery but was freed by the events of the Civil War, and moved north to Ohio, where she and Joshua met. Dunbar was born on June 27, 1872, in Dayton.

Both of Dunbar’s parents had taught themselves to read and write as slaves, and they believed that education was important. They also passed along the oral tradition of their people and powerful stories about their years living in bondage.

Although the Dunbars were well respected in their community, the family was poor. Joshua left them in 1874, when he was unable to secure work. Matilda supported her children–Dunbar and two sons from a previous marriage–by working as a washerwoman. Among her clients was the family of Orville and Wilbur Wright, with whom Dunbar attended Dayton's Central High School.

	pbw00986 Candle-lightin' Time (Dodd, Mead & Co., 1901)

The Young Poet
Inspired by his mother’s love for poetry, Dunbar began reciting and writing poetry as early as age six. By the time he was in high school, he was publishing his work regularly and becoming well known locally.

Dunbar was the only African American in his high school class, but he was popular and excelled in his studies. He was a member of the debating society, class poet, editor of the school paper, and president of both the senior class and the school's literary group, the Philomathean Society. He also wrote for Dayton community newspapers. By the age of fourteen, Dunbar had poems published in the Dayton Herald. He also edited a weekly African American newspaper, the Dayton Tattler, with help from the Wright brothers (who owned a printing plant).

After his graduation in 1891, the only work he could find was as an elevator operator in Dayton’s Callahan Building. In his downtime, Dunbar wrote prolifically. Throughout 1891 and 1892, Dunbar submitted his elevator poems for publication in newspapers and popular magazines with limited success.

pbw00987 Li'l' Gal (Dodd, Mead & Co., 1904)

"The Most Promising Young Colored Man in America"
His luck changed after he gave his first public reading on his twentieth birthday. A former teacher, Mrs. Helen Tuesdale, arranged for him to give the welcoming address to the Western Association of Writers when the organization met in Dayton. His work impressed his audience to such a degree that James Newton Matthews wrote to an Illinois paper praising Dunbar’s work. The letter was reprinted in several papers across the country, bringing Dunbar regional fame.

As his popularity grew, Dunbar decided to publish a book of poems. United Brethren Publishing House of Dayton printed Oak and Ivy in 1893 at Dunbar’s expense. Received well locally, the book failed to achieve widespread notice. Dunbar continued working as an elevator operator, selling his book for a dollar to people who rode the elevator.

Later that year, Dunbar headed to Chicago with hopes of finding work at the first World's Fair. He befriended the famous abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who found him a job as a clerk and arranged for him to read his poetry at the fair. Douglass later said that he considered Dunbar to be “the most promising young colored man in America.”

	pba02263 Poems of Cabin and Field (Dodd, Mead & Co., 1900)

Waking Up Famous
By 1895, Dunbar's poems began appearing in major national newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times. That year, he moved to Toledo, Ohio with help from attorney Charles Thatcher and Henry Archibald Tobey, the distinguished superintendent of the Toledo State Hospital for the Insane. Thatcher and Tobey arranged for Dunbar to recite his poems at local libraries and literary gatherings and paid the printing costs for the private publication of Dunbar’s second collection of poems, Majors and Minors, in 1895. This book finally propelled Dunbar to national fame.

The anthology contained poems from Oak and Ivy as well as some new work. Dunbar called the verse written in standard English “majors,” whereas those few poems in Kentucky black dialect were the “minors.” Although far outnumbered, the dialect poems drew the most attention, particularly from prominent literary critic William Dean Howells. On June 27, 1896, Howells published a glowing review in Harper’s Weekly. Because the same issue reported on the presidential nomination of William McKinley, it drew a massive circulation. It has been said that Dunbar went to bed destitute and woke up on the morning of his twenty-fourth birthday as one of the most famous living African Americans.

pba00346 Lyrics of Lowly Life (Dodd, Mead & Co, 1896)

London, Washington, and a Creole Wife
Howells was so impressed with Dunbar’s work that he arranged for the New York publishing firm Dodd Mead and Co. to combine Dunbar’s first two books into a third anthology, Lyrics of Lowly Life. Howells penned the introduction. Dunbar’s national fame grew and soon spilled across the Atlantic. In 1897, the Savage Club of London sponsored Dunbar’s six-month British tour.

After returning from England, Dunbar became assistant librarian at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., where he held a daily reading program for children. The following year, he married Alice Ruth Moore, a fair-skinned black Creole teacher, writer, and proponent of racial and gender equality, originally from New Orleans. Dunbar had initiated a correspondence with Alice in 1895 and married her in secret over the objections of friends and family.

Although they resided in Washington for just more than a year, the Dunbars greatly influenced the art and culture of the city. Their home in LeDroit Park was the center of the district’s African American life. Dignitaries, politicians, and literary figures traveled to visit Dunbar there from all over the country. Dunbar also was invited to ride in the inaugural parade of William McKinley–an unprecedented honor.

	pba00348 When Malindy Sings (Dodd, Mead & Co., 1903)

A Life Cut Short
Despite these successes in Washington, dust from old manuscripts, newspapers, and books accumulated in his lungs, aggravating his tuberculosis. Poor health forced Dunbar to quit the Library of Congress and relocate, first to Colorado and later to the Catskills, with a brief return to Washington in between.

Although he was supposed to rest, Dunbar devoted all his time to writing and giving recitals. He turned to both fiction and verse, publishing four collections of short stories and four novels, as well as plays and music. Forty of his poems were set to music by famous musicians of his time, and fifteen of his short stories appeared in renowned periodicals.

Unable to receive treatment to ease the pain of his disease, Dunbar self-medicated with alcohol. His eventual addiction led to the end of his marriage after only four years, driving him to depression and increased alcohol dependence, which further damaged his health. He returned to Dayton in 1904 and died there, in his mother’s arms, on February 9, 1906. He is buried in Dayton’s Woodland Cemetery. Matilda lived in the house until her death in 1934. Two years later, the Dunbar House became the first state memorial to honor an African American.

pba00345 Folks from Dixie (Dodd, Mead & Co, 1898)

A Commentator for his Times
Although he lived to be only 34 years old, Dunbar was a prolific writer and a commentator on his times. Although he was gifted at using dialect to convey character, he came to despise the focus on those poems while his other work went almost ignored, including his standard English verse and his published experiments with Irish, German, and Western regional dialects. That focus, which began with the Harper’s Weekly review, led him to declare that William Dean Howells had done him no favors.

That focus also led critics to accuse Dunbar of portraying negative stereotypes to satisfy the white reading public. The demand of white magazine publishers forced Dunbar to use the popular plantation tradition in his stories and poems. The white audience also demanded the “dialect” poetry, which stereotypically represented slaves as happy, child-like buffoons. Dunbar hoped that once he won acclaim, he could introduce to his audience to his more serious poetry about love, nature, and death. Unfortunately, that side of his work never was widely recognized, although it occupied the majority of his writing time.

	pba02277 TheUncalled (Dodd, Mead & Co, 1898)

The Legacy Continues
Contributing to accusations that Dunbar catered to a white audience was the fact that his first three novels–including the semi-autobiographical The Uncalled (1898)–were about white characters. However, his last novel, The Sport of the Gods (1902), detailed the life of an uprooted black family in the urban North. A few of his later stories suggested racial unrest, addressing the difficulties encountered by his race and efforts to achieve equality. His later poetry also mourned tragic events like the many lynchings that continued to take place at the turn of the century.
Dunbar generally was considered a symbol of African-American artistry and a representative of his race. His legacy lives on a century after his death, in the schools and housing projects the bear his name in many cities.

In the second half of the twentieth century, Paul Laurence Dunbar was rediscovered. Conferences across the country celebrated the hundredth anniversary (in 1972) of Dunbar’s birth. Centennial conferences in the winter of 2006 continued to honor Dunbar upon the anniversary of his death. In addition, new books during the past thirty years have reissued long out-of-print poetry and put to print some of the 200 unpublished writings he had left behind, making his work available to a new generation.

Bibliography (full text available for hyperlinked titles)