Poet, essayist, novelist, short story writer, playwright, and literary innovator Paul Laurence Dunbar is one of America's most famous poets of the 19th century. Most of his popular poems were light, funny dialect stories about the lives of Black Americans. However, he was also called the "Poet Laureate" of his people for some of his serious poetry. Dunbar was the first Black American to gain national eminence as a poet. Born on June 27, 1872, in Dayton, Ohio, to parents who had been enslaved in Kentucky before the Civil War. After only a few years, Dunbar’s parents divorced. His mother, Matilda, raised Paul while doing laundry for the Wright family. Two of the Wright children, Orville and Wilbur, gained fame in the early 1900s as pioneers of aviation.
During her enslavement, his mother did not receive formal education. As an adult, she took night classes to improve her literacy. She taught Paul to read before he entered school. Dunbar began writing stories and verse when he was a child. Paul attended Dayton’s public schools. He was the only Black student in Central High School class of 1890. So few African Americans attended high school at the time that segregated public secondary schools were financially unfeasible in Dayton. At Central High, Paul edited the school newspaper and was a member of the literary and debate societies. Future aviator, Orville Wright, was a member of Paul’s high school class but did not graduate. He also participated in literary societies.
He actually became the president of the school literary society, editor-in-chief of the school paper, and class poet. When he was sixteen years old, he published two poems, ‘Our Martyred Soldiers’ and ‘On the River’ in The Herald. As a senior in 1890, Dunbar published the Dayton Tattler, a weekly, African American newspaper, with the assistance of Orville Wright. The paper only lasted for three issues because of a lack of subscriptions. After high school, Dunbar did not have enough money to attend college or secure the law career he was hoping for. Paul eventually got a position as an elevator operator in Dayton. He was kept from a number of other professions due to his race. Dunbar’s free time was spent writing. In 1892, the poet James Newton Matthews invited Dunbar to read his poetry at an annual meeting for the Western Association of Writers in 1892.
Paul Laurence Dunbar published his first volume of poetry, "Oak and Ivy" (1893), that he composed during his childhood and teen years, at his own expense. As he was working he sold copies to his elevator passengers to pay for the printing. This work was traditional in its verse form but written in dialect. One of his most popular poems, “Sympathy,” he expresses, in a somber tone, the plight of Black people in American society. Dunbar worked within the period in which he lived. Writing for a largely White readership, Dunbar wrote poems and constructed characters that appeared similar to the ones those authors working in the plantation tradition deployed. Dunbar wrote poetry in both standard English and in "Negro dialect". His dialect poetry became the most well-known. It was clear from this first publication that Dunbar was a talented poet.
Shortly after the publication of Oak and Ivy, attorney Charles A. Thatcher offered to pay for Dunbar’s college. He chose instead to persist purely in his writing career as he was encouraged by his sales of poetry. As more people came in contact with his work, however, his reputation spread. Several well-known people read his work and heard him speak. In 1893, Dunbar's first break came when he was invited to recite at the Chicago World’s Fair, where he met Frederick Douglass, the renowned abolitionist. Douglass offered the young poet the opportunity to assist him with the Fair’s Haitian exhibition. Though the job would earn Dunbar only half of his current salary, he leapt at the chance to work with the great orator and abolitionist, whom he idolized. With the help of poet James Whitcomb Riley and Douglass, he traveled and recited outside Ohio for the first time.
Dunbar wrote about the experience of African Americans during and after the Civil War. He wrote of their dreams and feelings. He also told of their hardships and racist treatment. Dunbar’s second break came when on his 24th birthday, he received a favorable review of his second collection of poems, "Majors and Minors" in 1895. It came from influential literary critic William Dean Howells and it established Dunbar’s national reputation. In Harper’s Weekly, Howells praised Dunbar as “the first man of his color to study his race objectively” and commended the dialect poems as faithful representations of Black speech. Critics believe Howell’s applause also had a chilling effect on Dunbar’s legacy, as the fervent discussion around Dunbar’s dialect poems precluded a comprehensive study of his oeuvre, (his works as a writer).
Paul Laurence Dunbar was active in the area of civil rights and the uplifting of African Americans. He was a participant in the March 5, 1897, meeting to celebrate the memory of abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Shortly before he died, Douglass called Dunbar "the most promising young colored man in America." The attendees worked to found the American Negro Academy under Alexander Crummell. His writings, including essays and short stories, confronted the topics of social injustice, and he advocated for equal rights. As time went on, his stature within this area grew, and he became one of the most influential civil rights activists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Dunbar's third collection, "Lyrics of Lowly Life" established Dunbar as the foremost African-American poet in America. This new volume sold impressively across the country. By the late 1890s, Dunbar started to explore the short story and novel forms. In the latter, he frequently featured White characters and society. Dunbar's essays and poems were published widely in the leading journals of the day, including Harper's Weekly, the Saturday Evening Post, the Denver Post, Current Literature and others. During his life, commentators often noted that Dunbar appeared to be purely Black African, at a time when many leading members of the African-American community were notably of mixed race, often with considerable European ancestry. He spent time touring the United States and in 1897, he traveled to England for a literary tour, reading his poetry aloud. While in England, he was able to find a publisher for a British edition of "Lyrics of Lowly Life".
Dunbar also became friends with musician Samuel Taylor Coleridge during his time in England, with whom he collaborated on an opera. Coleridge-Taylor was influenced by Dunbar to use African and American Negro songs and tunes in future compositions. Throughout this time, his poetic and prose works would appear in a number of well-known publications and journals, such as Harper’s Weekly, the Sunday Evening Post, the Denver Post, and Current Literature. In 1897 Dunbar was invited to read some of his poetry in London as part of the Diamond Jubilee celebration of Queen Victoria. His first three novels—including "The Uncalled" (1898), which reflected his own spiritual problems—were about White characters. His first novel "The Uncalled", critics described as "dull and unconvincing".
After returning from England, he lived for two years in Washington, D.C., working at the Library of Congress. Although his health suffered during the two years he lived there, the period nonetheless proved fruitful for Dunbar. During his time in Washington, D. C., Dunbar attended some classes at Howard University. He began a correspondence with fellow author Alice Ruth Moore after reading her poetry in a magazine. They shared letters for two years, before they eloped and wed on March 6, 1898. Dunbar was known to handle his money recklessly and was not able to support himself and his mother. It was this same year that he published his first collection of short stories, "Folks from Dixie". This work focused on the examination of racial prejudice and was received well.
At the end of 1898, his health degenerating still further, Dunbar left the Library of Congress and commenced another reading tour. In 1899, he also wrote a novel entitled "The Uncalled" and two more collections of poems—"Lyrics of the Hearthside" and "Poems of Cabin and Field". Paul Laurence Dunbar wrote a dozen books of poetry, four books of short stories, five novels, and a play. He also wrote lyrics for "In Dahomey", the first musical written and performed entirely by Blacks to appear on Broadway in 1903. The musical comedy successfully toured England and America over a period of four years. It was one of the more successful theatrical productions of its time. His essays and poems were published widely in the leading journals of the day.
For most of his career, Dunbar wrote for a White audience and generally avoided racial issues in his work. His last, sometimes considered his best, was "The Sport of the Gods" (1902), concerning an uprooted Black family in the urban North. Physicians diagnosed Paul as having tuberculosis in 1899, a disease that was mostly fatal at this time. Dunbar’s doctors recommended he drink whiskey. The diagnosis sent Dunbar into a tailspin. He developed a drinking problem. On the advice of his doctors, he moved to Colorado with his wife. Doctors thought this might help his health. His drinking caused him to abused his wife. Dunbar inflicted physical, psychological, and verbal abuse on his wife. After three years of marriage Dunbar and his wife separated in 1902, after he nearly beat her to death, but they never divorced.
The last years of his life were spent writing all manner of works from his mother’s home. It was there that he passed away on 9th February 1906 at only thirty-three. Although he missed the Harlem Renanissance, he set the stage for the Harlem Renaissance, inspiring such writers as Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes. His writings captured the ambitions, hopes, and dreams of Black Americans of the time. Dunbar has continued to influence other writers, lyricists, and composers. Composer William Grant Still used excerpts from four dialect poems by Dunbar as epigraphs for the four movements of his Symphony No. 1 in A-flat, "Afro-American" (1930). Although he lived to be only 33 years old, Dunbar was prolific, writing short stories, novels, librettos, plays, songs and essays as well as the poetry for which he became well known.