Alice Dunbar Nelson

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writer; poet; journalist; teacher; civil rights activist

Personal Information

Born on July 19, 1875, in New Orleans, LA; died on September 18, 1935, in Philadelphia, PA; married Paul Laurence Dunbar, March 8, 1898 (separated, 1902); married Henry Arthur Callis, January 1910; (divorced, 1911); married Robert J. Nelson, April 1916
Education: Straight University, nursing and teaching degree, 1890; Cornell University, MA, 1890s; postgraduate study at Pennsylvania School of Industrial Art and University of Pennsylvania, 1890s-1900s.
Memberships: Women's Committee on the Council of Defense; Delaware's State Republican Committee, 1920; American Friends Inter-Racial Peace Committee, executive secretary, 1928-31.

Career

New Orleans public schools, LA, teacher, 1988-96; writer, 1895-1935; New York City public schools, teacher, 1897; Wilmington public schools, DE, teacher, 1902-20; various black colleges, teacher, 1902-20.

Life's Work

Bright, bold, and beautiful, Alice Dunbar-Nelson had a racially ambiguous appearance and well-heeled rearing that allowed her to move easily between various social classes, ethnicities, and races in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century America. Her experiences allowed her a unique perspective on society that she captured with uncanny precision, feeling, insight, and image in her writing. At the core of each of her works is a narrator. Whether it is herself, someone she knew, or someone she invented, her narrators lure readers into the lives of Americans whom they otherwise would not have had the inclination or opportunity to know during their real-life experience. To follow Dunbar-Nelson's prose is to embark on a virtual journey into the little-known neighborhoods and homes of her era, witnessing up-close the timeless struggles, failings, sorrows, hopes, and valor of ordinary people--black, white, Creole, Cajun, the newly immigrated, or ethnically unspecified.

Readers become quiet, watchful, and uncomfortable visitors to Dunbar-Nelson's real and imagined experiences and students to her conclusions about society. Her narrator's voice, then and now, seamlessly moves from one community and human experience to the next, carrying from them cries, smells, and particles to readers who might otherwise ignore or forget them. In her 1998 MELUS essay Kristina Brooks described Dunbar-Nelson's method of affecting the reader by "Putting the reader in his or her place, typically outside of the community she depicts, Dunbar-Nelson does not just describe the divisive effects of rigidly maintained group identities. She makes the reader feel 'out of place' and thus forced to recognize just what economic, ethnic, and social place he or she is in. From such a self-conscious position, the reader can see not only quaintness, but can also recognize his or her relationship to Dunbar-Nelson's palette of local colors."

Motivated by Love and Race

Dunbar-Nelson was born Alice Ruth Moore on July 19, 1875, in New Orleans, Louisiana, to Patricia Wright, a seamstress, and Joseph Moore, a merchant marine. Her middle-class status and light appearance gave her access to the entire gamut of diverse class, racial, and ethnic classes in New Orleans society. By the time she was 15, she graduated from Straight College in New Orleans, where she had been trained in teaching and nursing. In her free time, she edited the woman's page of the New Orleans Journal of the Lodge and played the violin-cello and mandolin. From 1892 to 1896, she taught school in her hometown. Later, she would earn a master's degree from Cornell University and also attend the Pennsylvania School of Industrial Art and the University of Pennsylvania.

In 1895, at age twenty, Dunbar-Nelson published Violets and Other Tales, a collection of her short stories and poems. In much of her early work, weighty in romantic imaging, she employs the image of violets to represent love. The title story, "Violets," is about a young woman in love for the first time. The woman presents her suitor with a bouquet of violets and a lock of her hair, tied together with a blue ribbon. When her suitor leaves her for a woman with a more robust economic future, the young woman dies from a broken heart. Later the suitor finds the dried bouquet and asks his wife if they came from her. Responding that she hates flowers, she tells her husband to burn them, destroying this last relic of pure love.

In 1899 Dunbar-Nelson published a collection of stories about Creole life, The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories. In the nineteenth century, according to MELUS, Louisiana civil code recognized three social groups: whites, blacks, and gens de couleur libres, or free people of color. The latter group includes the Creole, people of mixed identity, borne from Louisiana's first French and Spanish settlers. "As an ethnic identity," MELUS noted, "Creole is and was a category of indeterminate race, and Dunbar-Nelson provocatively emphasizes the probability--but not the certainty--of African influence." It is no wonder that, given her ethnically ambiguous physical features, Dunbar-Nelson would identify with the experiences of Louisiana's Creole people.

Life with Dunbar

In 1895 writer Paul Laurence Dunbar, two years Dunbar-Nelson's senior, began corresponding with her after seeing her poem and photograph in the Boston Monthly Review, initiating a two-year courtship that culminated with their meeting in New York in 1897. Dunbar-Nelson had moved to Brooklyn to teach at Public School 83. She met Dunbar for the first time on the eve of his departure for a reading tour in England. Dunbar-Nelson gave him violets, and the couple became secretly engaged. While in New York, Dunbar-Nelson co-founded the White Rose Mission (later called the White Rose Home for Girls in Harlem). On March 8, 1898, she quietly married Dunbar and abandoned her students mid-term (at Public School 66 now) to move with him to Washington, D.C.

Dunbar-Nelson differed from her husband in both appearance and literary style, hers both racially and ethnically mild, and his distinctly black. Their contrasting experiences and reactions to life set a rift between them that became insurmountable for them to overcome. "His isn't the only heart she stole with her alabaster skin and auburn hair, and only the tiniest trace of Africa in her features," according to Black Issues Book Review. "Here and there when it got her into [sic] places such as the opera or art museum, she passed for white, slipping easily through the doors of places where Paul, with his deep brown skin, full nose and lips, would have been turned away with a snarl and a slur." Their own families were at odds with one another, and according to Black Issues Book Review, Dunbar-Nelson reportedly complained bitterly in private about Dunbar's philandering and drinking. Their hostile exchanges even exploded into violence.

Both privately (in letters) and publicly, Dunbar-Nelson denounced Dunbar's frequent employment of black dialect in his fiction and poetry. Her disdain for this technique was communicated to Dunbar early on. In a letter to him in May of 1895, she wrote, "You ask my opinion about the Negro dialect in literature? Well, frankly, I believe in everyone following his own bent. If it be so that one has a special aptitude for dialect work why it is only right that dialect work should be a specialty. But if one should be like me--absolutely devoid of the ability to manage dialect, I don't see the necessity of cramming and forcing oneself into that plane because one is a Negro or a Southerner." In the same letter, she likened stereotypical treatment of blacks in literature to "a quinine pill in jelly." In a January of 1929 journal entry, Dunbar-Nelson reported that the Dunbar dialect "[m]akes me sick." She left her husband in 1902 and moved to Wilmington, Delaware. She would never again see Dunbar, who died from tuberculosis in 1906.

Over the next 18 years Dunbar-Nelson served as a teacher and administrator at Howard High School. She also directed seven summer teaching sessions at State College for Colored Students (later to become Delaware State College) and two summer sessions at Hampton Institute. In Wilmington, Dunbar-Nelson met and married Henry Arthur Callis in 1910. They became estranged from each other in 1911. On April 20, 1916, she married journalist Robert J. Nelson, with whom she remained until her death in 1935.

Brought Her "Looking Glass" to Readers

With a readership not prone to embrace unpleasant literary depictions of race relations, Dunbar-Nelson was forced to mask cleverly her conclusions and statements about race in her work. Her personal anecdotes as a native of Louisiana and a light-skinned black who passed for white offered her an excellent character and plot landscape to pull from. She tapped autobiographical events as she literarily tricked readers into pondering racial prejudice. "To Dunbar-Nelson's evident delight, New Orleans society was like Alice's Looking Glass when it came to Creole identity," MELUS noted, "with its specific and yet unverifiable qualifications: one could change from black to white, African to French, simply by passing through the boundaries of this Creole social class."

Indeed, it is in "the confusing realm of the Looking Glass" that Dunbar-Nelson captured and showcased the lives of American blacks, whites, and those who did not live either experience completely. According to MELUS, "Pitting the individual against the mob, the ethnic orphan against the social requirement for a family name, or the non-local reader against the complex and ambiguous local codes, Dunbar-Nelson dramatizes the conflict that flares along fault lines between individual and group identities."

Dunbar-Nelson's column, "As in a Looking Glass," which ran from 1926 to 1930, further presented her careful and thorough analysis of American society. In another regular column, entitled "A Women's Point of View" (later called "Une Femme Dit"), Dunbar-Nelson wrote in 1926, "We are forced by cruel challenges to explain, show our wares, tell our story, excuse our shortcomings, defend our positions. And we insist that every Negro be a propagandist.... We forget that didacticism is the death of art." Dunbar-Nelson was able to expose unpleasant and complicated social nuances of race in America without compromising the art of literary form and substance.

Carried Readers to 'Steenth Street

Dunbar-Nelson narrated her 'Steenth Street stories to readers assuming they would be alien to the experience of the American poor. Her narrators remind them of their place as intruders. Pointing this out with the story "The Revenge of James Brown," which is about a crisis ignited by the opening of the Pure in Heart Mission, MELUS noted that "[T]he reader is introduced to the neighborhood and then put on notice that his or her presence there is as intrusive as the presence of the dreaded missionaries." The following story excerpt well illustrates the point:

"It was a new sound, the soft rumble of rubber tires and the high-stepping of pampered horses. There was nothing familiar to the denizens of 'Steenth Street. Aristocracy had invaded its sacred precincts and was trying to establish a precedent down near Third Avenue. Aristocracy in silk-lined gown was walking in and out among the babies and dirty little folks swarming on the curbstones. 'Steenth Street felt itself disgraced and intruded upon."

Dunbar-Nelson's tales of 'Steenth Street "are both a cause and a consequence of their class position," according to MELUS. The social boundaries in these stories reflected those of real-life that were more subtle and therefore overlooked by her potential readership as unfairly narrow. Such boundaries included street names, surnames, and occupations and were just as restricting as gender, age, and skin color.

Mirrored Her Literary Themes in Activism

Just as Dunbar-Nelson's body of work was not limited to fiction and poetry, it was also not exclusively themed on social prejudice and the drama it played out in personal relationships. Much of her work was politically motivated, especially later on as she sought to speak out against injustices stemmed by government. Her well-known poem "I Sit and Sew," published in 1918 reflected her frustration with the government's neglect to accept the contributions of women during the World War I years.

Dunbar-Nelson did a great deal to serve her community; she volunteered with the Circle of Negro War Relief in 1918 and the Women's Commission on the Council of National Defense, organizing volunteerism among black women in the southern states. Earlier, in 1915, her activism included working as field organizer for the Middle Atlantic States in the women's suffrage movement. In 1920, she began work with the State Republican Committee of Delaware, organizing political activities for black women, and teamed with members of the State Federation of Colored women to found the Industrial School for Colored Girls in Marshalltown, Delaware. The same year she began editing the Wilmington Advocate. Pressing harder against racism in America, Dunbar-Nelson led the Anti-Lynching Crusaders in Delaware in their support for the 1922 Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill. In 1924 she rallied Democratic support among black women and late that summer also published a serial piece in The Messenger, entitled "These 'Colored' United States." Between 1928 and 1931, Dunbar-Nelson frequently toured as a public speaker as part of her commission as executive secretary of the American Friends Inter-Racial Peace Committee.

As Dunbar-Nelson grew more active in championing political causes, she wrote less. Her final piece, "The Big Quarterly in Wilmington," appeared in the Journal Every Evening in 1932. On September 18, 1935, she died of heart failure at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital. Her ashes were scattered over the Delaware River. Give Us Each Day: The Diary of Alice Dunbar-Nelson was published posthumously.

Those familiar with Dunbar-Nelson's life and work will likely link her to violets, the flowers whose name she chose as the title of her first published story and for a love poem she wrote 25 years later. A number of American musicians since have set the poem to music.

Works

Selected writings

• (as Alice Ruth Moore) Violets and Other Tales, Monthly Review Press, 1895.
• (as Alice Dunbar) The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories, Dodd, 1899.
• (Editor, as Alice Moore Dunbar) Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence: The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the Days of Slavery to the Present Time, Douglass, 1914.
• (Editor and contributor, as Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson) The Dunbar Speaker and Entertainer, J.L. Nichols, 1920, republished as The Dunbar Speaker and Entertainer: Containing the Best Prose and Poetic Selections, G.K. Hall, 1996.
• (as Alice Dunbar-Nelson) Give Us Each Day: The Diary of Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Gloria T. Hull, ed., Norton, 1984.
• The Works of Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Gloria T. Hull, ed., Oxford University Press, 1988.

• Daily Crusader, July 2, 1894.
• Advertiser (Elmira, NY), September 18, 1898.
• Smart Set, September 1900, pp. 105-106.
• Standard Union (Brooklyn), March 7, 1900.
• Modern Language Notes, 24, April 1909, pp. 124-125.
• A.M.E. Church Review, 30, July 1913, pp. 5-13.
• Crisis, 8, September 1914, pp. 238-242.
• Paul Laurence Dunbar: Poet Laureate of the Negro Race, special issue of the A.M.E. Church Review, October 1914, pp. 5-19.
• Journal of Negro History, October 1916, pp. 361-376; 2 January 1917, pp. 51-78.
• Crisis, August 1917, p. 198.
• Messenger, August 1924, pp. 244-246, 6; September 1924, pp. 276-279; March 1927, pp. 73-86.
• American Inter-Racial Peace Committee Bulletin, October 1929.
• Journal Every Evening (Wilmington), August 27, 1932, pp. 8, 9.

Further Reading

Books

• Alexander, Eleanor, Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow: The Tragic Courtship and Marriage of Paul Laurence Dunbar and Alice Ruth Moore: A History of Love and Violence Among the African-American Elite, New York University Press, 2002.
• Hull, Gloria, ed., "A Chronology," in Give Us Each Day: The Diary of Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Norton, 1984, pp. 476-469.

• Black Issues Book Review, March-April 2002.
• CLA Journal, March 1976, pp. 322-326.
• MELUS, Summer 1998.

• "Alice Moore Dunbar Nelson," Dictionary of Literary Biography Online, www.galenet.com/servlet/GLD (January 19, 2004).
• "Alice Ruth Moore Dunbar Nelson," Contemporary Authors Online, www.galenet.com/servlet/GLD (January 19, 2004).
• "Modern American Poetry," University of Indiana at Urbana-Champaign, www.English.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/dunbar-nelson/about.htm (January 19, 2004).

— Melissa Walsh

Alice Dunbar Nelson
Born	Alice Ruth Moore July 19, 1875(1875-07-19) New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
Died	September 18, 1935(1935-09-18) (aged 60) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Straight University (now Dillard University)
Occupation	poet, journalist, political activist
Spouse	Paul Laurence Dunbar (1898-1906) Henry A. Callis (1910-191_) Robert J. Nelson (1916-1935)

Alice Ruth Moore Dunbar Nelson (July 19, 1875 – September 18, 1935) was an American poet, journalist and political activist. Among the first generation born free in the South after the Civil War, she was one of the prominent African Americans involved in the artistic flourishing of the Harlem Renaissance. Her first husband was the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar; she then married physician Henry A. Callis; and last married Robert J. Nelson, a poet and civil rights activist.

Contents 1 Life 2 Rhetorical context 3 Works 4 References 5 External links

Life

Alice Ruth Moore was born in New Orleans to middle-class parents Patricia Wright, a seamstress and former slave, and Joseph Moore, a merchant marine, who were people of color and part of the traditional multiracial Creole community of the city. At a time when fewer than 1% of Americans went to college, Moore graduated from Straight University (now Dillard University) in 1892 and started work as a teacher in the public school system of New Orleans.

In 1895 her first collection of short stories and poems, Violets and Other Tales,^[1] was published by The Monthly Review. About that time, Moore moved to New York. She co-founded and taught at the White Rose Mission (White Rose Home for Girls) in Brooklyn. Beginning a correspondence with the poet and journalist Paul Laurence Dunbar, she ended up moving to Washington, DC to join him when they married in 1898.

She and Paul Dunbar separated in 1902 but were never divorced. He was reported to have been disturbed by her lesbian affairs.^[2] Paul Dunbar died in 1906.

Alice Dunbar then moved to Wilmington, Delaware and taught at Howard High School for more than a decade. In 1910, she married Henry A. Callis, a prominent physician and professor at Howard University, but this marriage ended in divorce.

From 1913 to 1914, Dunbar was coeditor and writer for the A.M.E. Review, an influential church publication produced by the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME Church). In 1916 she married the poet and civil rights activist Robert J. Nelson. She joined him in becoming active in politics in Wilmington and the region. They stayed together for the rest of their lives. From 1920, she coedited the Wilmington Advocate, a progressive black newspaper. She also published The Dunbar Speaker and Entertainer, a literary anthology for a black audience.^[3]

Alice Dunbar Nelson was an activist for African Americans' and women's rights, especially during the 1920s and 1930s. While she continued to write stories and poetry, she became more politically active in Wilmington, and put more effort into numerous articles and journalism on leading topics. In 1915, she was field organizer for the Middle Atlantic states for the woman's suffrage movement. In 1918, she was field representative for the Woman's Committee of the Council of Defense. In 1924, Dunbar-Nelson campaigned for the passage of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, but the Southern Democratic block in Congress defeated it.^[3]

From about 1920 on, she made a commitment to journalism and was a highly successful columnist, with articles, essays and reviews appearing as well in newspapers, magazines, and academic journals.^[3] She was a popular speaker and had an active schedule of lectures through these years. Her journalism career originally began with a rocky start. During the late 19th century, it was still unusual for women to work outside of the home, let alone an African American woman, and the journalism business was a hostile, male-dominated field. In her diary, she spoke about the tribulations associated with the profession of journalism – "Damn bad luck I have with my pen. Some fate has decreed I shall never make money by it" (Diary 366). She discusses being denied pay for her articles and issues she had with receiving proper recognition for her work.

She moved from Delaware to Philadelphia in 1932, when her husband joined the Pennsylvania Athletic Commission. During this time, her health was in decline and she died from a heart ailment on September 18, 1935, at the age of sixty.^[3] She is interred at the Wilmington and Brandywine Cemetery in Wilmington, Delaware.^[4]

She was made an honorary member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority. Her papers were collected by the University of Delaware.^[3]

Her diary was published in 1984 and detailed her life during the years 1921 and 1926 to 1931 (“Alice Dunbar-Nelson”). As one of only two journals of 19th century African American women, Dunbar-Nelson's diary provided useful insight into the lives of black women during this time. It "summarizes her position in an era during which law and custom limited access, expectations, and opportunities for black women" (“Alice Dunbar-Nelson”). Her diary addressed issues such as family, friendship, sexuality, health, professional problems, travels, and often financial difficulties.

Rhetorical context

The rhetorical context of Alice Dunbar-Nelson’s writing includes subject, purpose, audience, and occasion. "Dunbar-Nelson’s writings addressed the issues that confronted African-Americans and women of her time".^[5] In essays such as “Negro Women in War Work” (1919), “Politics in Delaware” (1924), “Hysteria,” and “Is It Time for Negro Colleges in the South to Be Put in the Hands of Negro Teachers?” Dunbar-Nelson explored the role of black women in the workforce, education, and the antilynching movement.^[5] The examples demonstrate a social activist role in her life. Dunbar-Nelson’s writings express her belief of equality between the races and between men and women. She believed that African-Americans should have equal access to the educational institution, jobs, healthcare, transportation and other constitutionally granted rights.^[6]

Much of Dunbar-Nelson's writing was about the color line – both white and black color lines. In an autobiographical piece entitled Brass Ankles, Dunbar-Nelson discusses the difficulties she faced growing up mixed race in Louisiana. She recalls the isolation felt as a child, and the sensation of not belonging to or being accepted by either race. She said as a child she was called a "half white nigger" and that while adults were not as vicious with their name-calling, they were also not accepting of her. Both black and white individuals rejected her for being "too white." White coworkers didn't think she was racial enough and black coworkers did not think she was dark enough to work with her own people.^[5] She wrote that being multiracial was hard because "the 'yaller niggers,' the 'Brass Ankles' must bear the hatred of their own and the prejudice of the white race" (Brass Ankles). Much of Alice Dunbar-Nelson's writing was rejected because she wrote about the color line, oppression, and themes of racism. Few mainstream publications would publish her writing because it was not marketable. Dunbar-Nelson was able to publish her writing, however, when the themes of racism and oppression were more subtle.

Works

• Violets and Other Tales, Boston: Monthly Review , 1895. Short stories and poems, including "Titée", "A Carnival Jangle", and "Little Miss Sophie". Digital Schomburg.
• The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories, 1899, including "Titée" (revised), "Little Miss Sophie", and "A Carnival Jangle".
• "Wordsworth's Use of Milton's Description of Pandemonium", 1909. in Modern Language Notes.
• Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence, 1914.
• "People of Color in Louisiana", 1917, Journal of Negro History
• Mine Eyes Have Seen, 1918, one-act play, in The Crisis
• Poems were published in Crisis, Ebony and Topaz, the journal of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
• Poems were published in Opportunity, the journal of the Urban League.
• Caroling Dusk - a collection of African-American poets, 1927, including "I Sit and I Sew"
• "Snow in October", and "Sonnet", 1927
• "The Colored United States", 1924, The Messenger, literary and political magazine in NY
• "From a Woman's Point of View" ("Une Femme Dit"), 1926, column for the Pittsburgh Courier.
• "As in a Looking Glass", 1926–1930, column for the Washington Eagle newspaper
• "So It Seems to Alice Dunbar-Nelson", 1930, column for the Pittsburgh Courier
• Give Us Each Day: The Diary of Alice Dunbar-Nelson. ed. Gloria T. Hull, New York: Norton, 1984.
• "About Alice Dunbar-Nelson", Department of English, College of LAS, University of Illinois, 1988.

References

1. ^ Violets and Other Tales, Monthly Review, 1895. Digital Schomburg.
2. ^ Lillian Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America, Penguin Books, Ltd., 1991, page 98
3. ^ ^{a b c d e} Alice Dunbar-Nelson Papers, University of Delaware Library, accessed 20 April 2009
4. ^ "Alice Moore Dunbar Nelson". Find a Grave. http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=9785651. Retrieved October 21, 2010. 
5. ^ ^{a b c} "About Alice Dunbar-Nelson", Department of English, College of LAS, University of Illinois, 1988.
6. ^ Modern American Poetry

External links

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Alice Dunbar-Nelson

Biography portal

• Works by Alice Dunbar-Nelson at Project Gutenberg
• Alice Dunbar-Nelson Papers, University of Delaware Library

Persondata
Name	Dunbar-Nelson, Alice
Alternative names
Short description	American writer, activist
Date of birth	July 19, 1875
Place of birth	New Orleans, Louisiana
Date of death	September 18, 1935
Place of death	Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

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