PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR
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aur Laurence Dunsar. Born, Dayton, Ohio, June 27,1872. Educated in public schools, and graduated fromDayton High School, where he achieved some distinction.Editor of school paper, and noted as a versifier, from hisgrammar-school days. Printed his first book, Oak andIvy, in 1893. Two friends of his early manhood helped most to shapehis career, and to encourage him in his days of struggle—Dr. H. A. Tobey, the celebrated alienist of Toledo, Ohio,and Frederick Douglass. The former helped him to bringhis second book, Majors and Minors, before the public; thelatter, with whom he was associated in the Negro Buildingat the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893, was the hero of thepoet’s dreams, the one to whom he dedicated two of hismost serious poems. Although Dunbar is remembered largely for his dialectverse, it was never his intention to concentrate on dialect.His poems in pure English constitute the greater bulk ofhis verse, and that to which he was most passionately de-voted. The tragedy of his life was that the world “turnedto praise the jingle in a broken tongue.” His friendshipfor Booker Washington and a visit to Tuskegee inspiredhim to write the Tuskegee School Song, which is sung tothe tune of “Fair Harvard.” The famous criticism of Majors and Minors by WilliamDean Howells in Harper’s Weekly, June 27, 1897 estab-lished Dunbar’s prestige as an important figure in Americanliterature. From that time his success was assured. He was married to Alice Ruth Moore of New Orleans, ateacher in Brooklyn, N. Y., in March. 1898. 1
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