Paul Laurence Dunbar

Paul Laurence Dunbar was born in 1872 in Dayton, Ohio, to two former slaves from Kentucky; his father had escaped to Canada. The only Black student at his high school, he edited the paper there and presided over the literary club, then worked as an elevator operator at four dollars a week and had his first pamphlet printed at his own expense. At the Chicago Exposition in 1893, Frederick Douglass employed him at the Haitian pavilion. Employed at the Library of Congress, he left it in 1898 for writing and public readings, and married Alice Ruth Moore. He died in Dayton in 1906, at thirty-three.

In the catalogue 1

• PoetryLyrics of Lowly LifePaul Laurence Dunbar · 1896LiteraturePublic domain