Dunbar, Paul Laurence

Paul Laurence (1872-1906), an American poet. He was born in Dayton, Ohio, June 17, 1872. He died there February 10, 1906. His parents were negro slaves. The father escaped into Canada prior to the Civil War. The mother was freed by the war and rejoined her husband at Dayton. The father was a plasterer and white-washer; the mother did laundry work. Both parents learned to read. The father preferred history; the mother poetry. Paul grew up in poverty. He was by turns a newsboy and an elevator boy. He was educated in the public schools. He first attracted notice by writing a poem for his high school class. In 1903 he published a little volume of verses called Oak and Ivy Poems. It was pronounced creditable for a young man of any color. Though entirely capable of writing in standard English, young Dunbar felt that he ought to write in the negro dialect. It was his ambition to be regarded as the poet of the negro race. His best known poem is entitled When Malinda Sings. His mother's name was Malinda. His last poem, written for a Christmas book, was entitled, Howdy, Honey, Howdy. In 1898 he published a volume, Lyrics of Lowly Life, to which William Dean Howells wrote an introduction. "We call his verse dialect," said Howells, "but only so could he express the mental, moral, and social range of the Americanized black. He is humorous, tender, sympathetic. He realizes the limitations of his people and is not ashamed of them. He divines and reports the lowly hearts and minds." We add two characteristic stanzas of Dunbar's poetry. The first is a poem entitled Possum; the second is from his Whittier, lines written soon after the death of that poet. See Negro