Celebrating Daytonian Paul Laurence Dunbar

This year marks the sesquicentennial of Paul Laurence Dunbar’s birth, and there is a community-wide effort to shine the light brightly on one of America’s greatest poets and introduce the Dayton native’s legacy to a new generation of students.

Dunbar was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born in Dayton, Ohio, to parents who had been enslaved in Kentucky before the American Civil War, Dunbar began writing stories and verse when he was a child. He published his first poems at the age of 16 in a Dayton newspaper, and served as president of his high school’s literary society.

Dunbar’s popularity increased rapidly after his work was praised by William Dean Howells, a leading editor associated with Harper’s Weekly. Dunbar became one of the first African-American writers to establish an international reputation. In addition to his poems, short stories, and novels, he also wrote the lyrics for the musical comedy In Dahomey (1903), the first all-African-American musical produced on Broadway in New York. The musical later toured in the United States and the United Kingdom.

Suffering from tuberculosis, which then had no cure, Dunbar died in Dayton, Ohio on this day in 1906, Paul at the age of 33.

February 9 @ 10:00 am – 5:00 pm