Paul Lawrence Dunbar, one of the first African American poets to gain recognition and influence, was born on this day, June 27th, 1872 to freed slaves in Kentucky.
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As a child he would draw on his parents’ (Joshua and Matilda Murphy Dunbar) lives in the plantations for his writing. By the age of fourteen he had published works in the Dayton Herald. In 1893 he self-published his first poetry collection titled Oak and Ivy, which he paid for by selling a book for a dollar on the elevator he worked as an operator in.
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By 1895 his work was getting more and more recognition, appearing in places such as The New York Times. This same year, with the help of his friends, he published his second collection Majors and Minors, which had poems written in standard English (majors) and poems written in dialect (minors). In the following years he continued to publish more poetry collections like Lyrics of Lowly Life (1896), Lyrics of the Hearthside, and Poems of Cabin and Field (1988), a short story collection Folks from Dixie (1898), and a novel titled The Uncalled (1898).
In 1898 his health began to deteriorate due to tuberculosis and he left his job at the Library of Congress. Despite this, he continued to write the following years and published poetry, three novels, and three short story collections. When his health got worse, he returned to his mother’s home in Dayton, Ohio, where he died at the age of thirty-three on February 9, 1906.
One of his most famous poems, Sympathy, reads: