articlesforchristians

Poet overview:

• Paul Laurence Dunbar was born in 1872 in Dayton, Ohio.
• Dunbar’s parents, Matilda and Joshua, were slaves in Kentucky before being emancipated after the American Civil War.
• Dunbar started writing poetry as a child.
• Dunbar wrote his first poem at the age of six and gave his first public recital at the age of nine. 
• At the age of 16, Dunbar published the poems “Our Martyred Soldiers” and “On the River” in 1888 in Dayton’s The Herald newspaper.
• Dunbar was editor of his high school newspaper and president of his high school literary society.
• After completing his formal schooling in 1891, Dunbar took a job as an elevator operator, earning a salary of four dollars a week.
  • Dunbar was an elevator attendant in the same building in which Eva Best’s father conducted an architect’s office, and she became acquainted with Dunbar and his literary endeavors through seeing him in her father’s building. She was among the first persons to recognize the poetry of Dunbar and was influential in bringing him before the public.
• He had hoped to study law, but was not able to because of his mother’s limited finances.
  • He was restricted at work because of racial discrimination.
• In 1892, Dunbar asked the Wrights to publish his dialect poems as a book, but they didn’t have the means to print one. They recommended he try the United Brethren Publishing House, which in 1893 printed his first poetry collection, “Oak and Ivy”. Dunbar covered the printing costs himself and managed to earn back his investment in just two weeks by personally selling copies, often to passengers riding his elevator.
• In addition to being a poet, Dunbar was a novelist, playwright, and lyricist.
• Dunbar was the first black American poet to attain widespread international recognition.
• Dunbar married Alice Ruth Moore, on March 6, 1898. She was a teacher and poet from New Orleans whom he had met three years earlier.
  • Dunbar called her “the sweetest, smartest little girl I ever saw”.
• In October 1897 Dunbar took a job at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. He and his wife moved to the capital, where they lived in the comfortable LeDroit Park neighborhood.
  • At the urging of his wife, Dunbar soon left the job to focus on his writing, which he promoted through public readings. While in Washington, DC, Dunbar attended Howard University after the publication of Lyrics of Lowly Life.
• In 1900, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis, then often fatal.
  • His doctors recommended drinking whisky to alleviate his symptoms.
  • On the advice of his doctors, he moved to Colorado with his wife, as the cold, dry mountain air was considered favorable for TB patients.
  • Dunbar and his wife separated in 1902, after he nearly beat her to death but they never divorced.
  • Depression and declining health drove him to a dependence on alcohol, which further damaged his health.
• Dunbar returned to Dayton in 1904 to be with his mother. He died of tuberculosis on February 9, 1906, at the age of 33.
  • He was interred in the Woodland Cemetery in Dayton.

Poems

• Sunset
• Seedling