She desires to soothe the anguish and suffering that her mistresses feel, but she is unaware of how they will respond because they simply are not able to identify with what they think of as their servant’s untutored thoughts. She observes:

An’ I didn’t know dey feelin’s is de ve’y wo’ds dey said
W’en I tol’ ’em I was so’y. Dey had done gin up dey all;
But dey only seemed mo’ proudah dat dey men had hyeahed de call.
Bofe my mastahs went in gray suits, an’ I loved the Yankee blue,
But I t’ought dat I could sorrer for de losin’ of ’em too;
But I couldn’t, for I didn’t know de ha’f o’ whut I saw,
’Twell dey ’listed colo’ed sojers an’ my ’Lias went to wah.

None of this deters the speaker in the poem from identifying with the master’s family, she says, noting their tragic and near tragic ends:

W’en de women cried an’ mou’ned ’em, I could feel it thoo an’ thoo, For I had a loved un fightin’ in de way o’ dangah, too.

The tragedy is complete when both the gray and blue lose an important member. But Dunbar is always more than at pains to show the essence of humanity in the African American community.

Because racism kept him from pursuing law as a career, on which he had set his heart in high school, Dunbar was forced to take a job as an elevator operator when no other job was available to him. Still he was industrious. As he took his passengers up and down the elevator, he recited poetry, and took subscriptions for his projected book. William Blocker, a local businessman, financed Dunbar’s first book, Oak and Ivy, which the poet quickly sold in order to pay his debt to Blocker. Dunbar then proceeded to print and publish Majors and Minors, which Howells reviewed.

As we approach the centennial of Dunbar’s death it is clear that he was perceptive about voice and the human nature of his characters. His dialect poems are a testament to these attributes. One story concerning Dunbar’s abilities has come to me from Judith Anne Still, the daughter of William Grant Still, the dean of African American composers. Her mother, the writer Verna Arvey, recorded in her diary that Still said Richard B. Harrison told him (about 1923) that Dunbar once came to stay at his house and was playing with his child, whom he loved very much. All of a sudden he stood by the mantelpiece and recited the poem that had come into his mind: “Little Brown Baby.” He didn’t realize how good it was, but Harrison did and begged him to write it down then and there. This was one of those influential relationships that spread in many directions. Richard B. Harrison was not only best man at Dunbar’s wedding, but also the principal reason why Dunbar’s only full-length play, Herrick, survives. Harrison was also the first black actor to play De Lawd in Marc Connelly’s The Green Pastures .

William Grant Still (1895-1978), twenty-three years Dunbar’s junior, studied at Wilberforce University, and used four of Dunbar’s poems as epigraphs to his Symphony No. 1: The Afro-American. Three of the poems are in dialect and one is in standard English: “Twell de Night Is Pas’,” “W’en I Gits Home,” “An Ante-Bellum Sermon,” and “Ode to Ethiopia.” These are signal poems because each one represents one of those essential oral forms indigenous to black American literature: the blues, the spiritual, the sermon, and the traditional lyric.

This classical symphony is infused with Dunbar’s talented dialect. In the blues movement there is the longing of the speaker in “Twell de Night Is Pas’ ”:

Let the wo’k come ez it will,
So dat I fin’ you, my honey, at las’,
Somewhaih des ovah de hill.

In the second movement Still evokes the essence of the spiritual, which so influenced the culture, when he uses the poem “W’en I Gits Home,” where the speaker longs to hear God say: “Enough, Ol’ man, come home!” The third movement centers on “The Ante-Bellum Sermon,” and the fourth movement captures Dunbar’s sense of pride in his heritage in “Ode to Ethiopia,” where he writes:

Be proud, my Race, in mind and soul;
Thy name is writ on Glory’s scroll
In characters of fire.
High ’mid the clouds of Fame’s bright sky
Thy banner’s blazoned folds now fly,
And truth shall lift them higher.

This sense of black pride appeared in the poetry of Dunbar long before such feelings became fashionable.

Dunbar’s influence pervades as well the works of many writers who came after him. Dunbar’s legacy can be felt from the poetry of Langston Hughes to the works of the modernist artist Romare Bearden, whose collages are a dialect of traditional shapes and colors. In each case the individual is attempting to make art in a fresh and perceptive way. It is what Dunbar attempted and achieved when he daringly and boldly entered into the world of dialect. In these contemporary times we are likely to praise an author who captures the vernacular in a meaningful and realistic way and satisfies our need to believe what the character is saying. It is high time we “forgave” Paul Laurence Dunbar for practicing his craft and for making—in the process—superb art.

Bibliography

BOOKS BY PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR

Poetry:

Oak and Ivy. Dayton, Ohio: United Brethren Publishing House, 1893.

Majors and Minors. Toledo, Ohio: Hadley and Hadley, 1895.

Lyrics of Lowly Life. New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1896.

Lyrics of the Hearthside.