Paul Laurence Dunbar*

Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872—1906) is a poet, novelist, and short story writer from Dayton, Ohio. His parents had both been enslaved in Kentucky before the Civil War. When he was just 16, a Dayton newspaper began to publish his poems.

His mother had learned to read in order to help young Paul with his schooling. Her desire was that he might, some day, become a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church — the first independent black denomination in the United States.

He was the only African-American student at his high school, yet became the president of the school’s literary society. One of his closest friends was Orville Wright — who, along with his brother, were early encouragers of Dunbar’s poetry. They presented it to their father who was a bishop in the Church of the Brethren — the denomination that published his first volume, Oak and Ivy (1893).

Paul Laurence Dunbar eventually published twelve poetry collections, eight books of fiction, and he also wrote the lyrics for the first all-African-American musical performed on Broadway — In Dahomey (1903) — which later toured in both the U.S. and the U.K.

Christmas Carol

----Ring out, ye bells!
----All Nature swells
With gladness at the wondrous story,—
----The world was lorn,
----But Christ is born
To change our sadness into glory.

----Sing, earthlings, sing!
----To-night a King
Hath come from heaven's high throne to bless us.
----The outstretched hand
----O'er all the land
Is raised in pity to caress us.

----Come at his call;
----Be joyful all;
Away with mourning and with sadness!
----The heavenly choir
----With holy fire
Their voices raise in songs of gladness.

----The darkness breaks
----And Dawn awakes,
Her cheeks suffused with youthful blushes.
----The rocks and stones
----In holy tones
Are singing sweeter than the thrushes.

----Then why should we
----In silence be,
When Nature lends her voice to praises;
----When heaven and earth
----Proclaim the truth
Of Him for whom that lone star blazes?

----No, be not still,
----But with a will
Strike all your harps and set them ringing;
----On hill and heath
----Let every breath
Throw all its power into singing!

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Paul Laurence Dunbar: first post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Cascade) ― a book of poems written from the point-of-view of angels. His books are available through Wipf & Stock.

Ashley Bryan

Ashley Bryan is a painter, poet and children’s author who lives on Little Cranberry Island in Maine. He was born in 1923 in Harlem, and raised in the Bronx. His first book did not appear until 1962 when he became the first African American to publish a children’s book as both the author and illustrator. 

He has long been a promoter of reading poetry aloud for children. His book Ashley Bryan’s ABC of African American Poetry (1997) includes poems by such poets as Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, and Paul Laurence Dunbar. He has won the Coretta Scott King Award ten times ― sometimes for illustration, and sometimes both for writing and illustration. Perhaps his best known collection of his own poetry is 1992’s Sing To The Sun. He is also known for illustrated books of African folk tales, and of Black American Spirituals. 

 

The following poem is one of eleven poetic portraits of slaves, he wrote using original auction and plantation estate documents, that appear in his book, Freedom Over Me (2017). It was selected as a Newbery Honor Book. 

 

Qush 

Many years ago 

Mulvina and I worked together 

on a Louisiana plantation. 

Our voices could always be heard 

singing singing singing. 

It was our voices 

that brought us together. 

We sang to strengthen our spirits. 

We cared for each other. 

Luckily, we were sold together 

to the Fairchilds’ estate. 

We had a way with animals. 

We led their cattle 

to green pastures 

and still waters. 

No matter what the work―

herding the cattle, 

tending the garden, 

picking cotton― 

we sang. 

The steady gait of the cattle, 

their contented, quiet munching, 

aroused sentiments of song 

within us. 

We sang low, thoughtful melodies 

to Bible stories we heard 

standing in the back 

of the Big House 

for Sunday church services. 

We remembered 

the stories of suffering and longing, 

of Moses, Joshua, David 

of Jesus and Mary. 

Stories like our own. 

During the heavy laboring 

in the cotton fields, 

caring for the garden, 

planting rows of vegetables 

for the estate, 

the tiring daily chores, 

Mulvina and I sang together quietly: 

“Oh, by and by, 

by and by, 

I’m going to lay down 

this heavy load.”

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His latest poetry collection is Ampersand (2018, Cascade). His books are available through Amazon, and Wipf & Stock, including the anthologies The Turning Aside, and Adam, Eve, & the Riders of the Apocalypse.

Paul Laurence Dunbar

Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872—1906) was one of the earliest black poets to gain wide attention in the United States. He couldn’t afford to go to college, and so took a job as an elevator operator in Dayton, Ohio. His first book Oak and Ivy (1893) was self-published, and he paid for it by selling copies to elevator riders for $1.

He soon moved to Chicago, where he was befriended by Frederick Douglass, who called him — “the most promising young colored man in America.”

His second book Majors and Minors (1895, Hadley & Hadley) appeared as his poems were receiving publication, in The New York Times and other major newspapers and magazines. A number of the poems in these collections were written in dialect, and were, at the time, the poems that drew attention to him.

His third book, was published by Dodd, Mead, & Company — and led to a six-month reading tour of England in 1897 — a company he subsequently published his poetry and fiction through.

He died from Tuberculosis when he was just 33.

We Wear the Mask

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Paul Laurence Dunbar: second post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His latest poetry collection is Ampersand (2018, Cascade). His books are available through Amazon, and Wipf & Stock, including the anthologies The Turning Aside, and Adam, Eve, & the Riders of the Apocalypse.

Joseph Seamon Cotter

Joseph Seamon Cotter (1861—1949) is the author of six books of poetry, including A White Song and a Black One (1909). He is also among the first black American playwrights to have their work published. Although he had received little formal education prior to adulthood, he became a grammar school teacher and principal — serving in Louisville schools for over fifty years. He was a close friend of the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar.

Cotter and his wife had four children, including Joseph Seamon Cotter Jr. — a promising young poet, who died of tuberculosis at age 23.
Cotter’s Collected Poems appeared in 1938.

Sonnet To Negro Soldiers

They shall go down unto Life's Borderland,
Walk unafraid within that Living Hell,
Nor heed the driving rain of shot and shell
That 'round them falls; but with uplifted hand
Be one with mighty hosts, an arméd band
Against man's wrong to man—for such full well
They know. And from their trembling lips shall swell
A song of hope the world can understand.
All this to them shall be a glorious sign,
A glimmer of that resurrection morn,
When age-long Faith crowned with a grace benign
Shall rise and from their brows cast down the thorn
Of prejudice. E'en though through blood it be,
There breaks this day their dawn of Liberty.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His latest poetry collection is Ampersand (2018, Cascade). His books are available through Amazon, and Wipf & Stock, including the anthologies The Turning Aside, and Adam, Eve, & the Riders of the Apocalypse.