Alice Dunbar Nelson

Alice 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 married, lastly, to Robert J. Nelson, a poet and civil rights activist. She achieved prominence as a poet, author of short stories and dramas, newspaper columnist, and editor of two anthologies.

Alice Dunbar Nelson
Born
Alice Ruth Moore

(1875-07-19)July 19, 1875
New Orleans, Louisiana, US
DiedSeptember 18, 1935(1935-09-18) (aged 60)
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US
NationalityAmerican
Alma materStraight University
Cornell University
Occupationpoet, journalist, political activist
Spouse(s)Paul Laurence Dunbar (1898–1906)
Henry A. Callis (1910-1916)
Robert J. Nelson (1916–1935)

Life

Alice Ruth Moore was born in New Orleans on July 19, 1875, the daughter of an African-American seamstress and former slave and a white seaman.[1] Her parents, Patricia Wright and Joseph Moore, were middle-class 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 (later merged into Dillard University) in 1892 and worked as a teacher in the public school system of New Orleans at Old Marigny Elementary.[1]

In 1895, her first collection of short stories and poems, Violets and Other Tales,[2] was published by The Monthly Review. About that time, Moore moved to Boston and then New York City.[3] She co-founded and taught at the White Rose Mission (White Rose Home for Girls) in Manhattan's San Juan Hill neighborhood, [4] beginning a correspondence with the poet and journalist Paul Laurence Dunbar.

Her writing and photo in a literary magazine captured his attention, and in 1898, after corresponding for two years, she ended up moving to Washington, DC to join him and they married in 1898. But the relationship proved stormy, exacerbated by Dunbar's declining health due to tuberculosis, alcoholism developed from doctor-prescribed whiskey consumption, and depression. In 1902, after he beat her nearly to death, she left him, and moved to Delaware.[5] She and Paul Dunbar separated in 1902 but were never divorced. He was reported to also have been disturbed by her lesbian affairs.[6] Paul Dunbar died in 1906.

Alice Dunbar then moved to Wilmington, Delaware and taught at Howard High School for more than a decade. During this period, she also taught summer sessions at State College for Colored Students (the predecessor of Delaware State University) and at the Hampton Institute. In 1907, she took a leave of absence from her teaching position in Wilmington and enrolled as a student at Cornell University, returning to Wilmington in 1908.[7] 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 co-editor 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.

During this era she also had intimate relationships with women, including the activist Fay Jackson Robinson.[8]

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.[7]

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 a 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.[7]

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.[7] 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.[9][10]

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.[7] She was cremated in Philadelphia.[11] She was made an honorary member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority. Her papers were collected by the University of Delaware.[7]

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.[12]

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".[13] 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.[13] 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.[14] Her activism and support for certain racial and feminist causes started to appear around the early 1900s, where she publicly discussed the women's suffrage movement in the middle American states. in 1918, she officially held the role of field representative for the Woman's Committee of the Council of Defense, only a few years after marrying Robert J. Nelson who was a poet and a social activist as well. She significantly contributed to some African American journalism such as the Wilmington Advocate and The Dunbar Speaker and Entertainer.[15] Following her leading role in the Woman's Committee, Alice became the executive secretary of the American friends inter-racial peace committee, which was then a highlight of her activism life. She successfully created a political/feminist career co-editing newspapers and essays that focused on the social issues that minorities and women were struggling through in American through the 1920s, and she was specifically influential due to her gain of an international supportive audience that she used to voice over her opinion.[16]

Much of Dunbar-Nelson's writing was about the color line – both white and black color lines. In an autobiographical piece entitled "Brass Ankles Speaks", she 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.[13] 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 Speaks"). Much of 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. She was able to publish her writing, however, when the themes of racism and oppression were more subtle.[17]

Along with other women Harlem Renaissance writers, Dunbar Nelson addressed the injustices faced by black male soldiers. Her one-act play Mine Eyes Have Seen, written in 1918, deals with the constant threat of lynching hanging over black southern communities, contrasted to the sacrifice black men make as U.S. soldiers. It conveys the message that black soldiers will rightfully demand full citizenship on their return from fighting for the U.S. in war. [18]

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 Woman" reprinted in Margaret Busby (ed.), Daughters of Africa, 1992, pp. 161–163.)
  • 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 the Building of Pandemonium", 1909, in Modern Language Notes.
  • (As editor) Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence: The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of Slavery to the Present Time, 1914.
  • "People of Color in Louisiana", 1917, in Journal of Negro History.
  • Mine Eyes Have Seen, 1918, one-act play, in The Crisis.
  • (As editor) The Dunbar Speaker and Entertainer: Containing the Best Prose and Poetic Selections by and About the Negro Race, with Programs Arranged for Special Entertainments, 1920.
  • "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.
  • "I Sit and I Sew", "Snow in October", and "Sonnet", in Countee Cullen (ed.), Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Negro Poets, 1927.
  • "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.
  • Various poems published in Crisis, Ebony and Topaz, the journal of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and Opportunity, the journal of the Urban League.
  • Give Us Each Day: The Diary of Alice Dunbar-Nelson, ed. Gloria T. Hull, New York: Norton, 1984.
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References
  1. Nagel, James (2014). Race and Culture in New Orleans Stories: Kate Chopin, Grace King, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, and George Washington Cable. University of Alabama Press. pp. 20–. ISBN 978-0-8173-1338-8. Retrieved April 22, 2018.
  2. "Violets and Other Tales", Monthly Review, 1895. Digital Schomburg.
  3. Culp, Daniel Wallace (1902). Twentieth century Negro literature; or, A cyclopedia of thought on the vital topics relating to the American Negro. Atlanta: J. L. Nichols & Co. p. 138.
  4. Unprotected Labor: Household Workers, Politics, and Middle-class Reform in New York, 1870–1940, May, Vanessa H., University of North Carolina Press, pages 90–91.
  5. Highleyman, Liz (13 March 2008), Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Lavender Media, Inc., retrieved 5 May 2013
  6. Faderman, Lillian, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America, Penguin Books, 1991, p. 98.
  7. Guide to the Alice Dunbar-Nelson papers, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware. Retrieved 17 May 2020.
  8. Bendix, Trish (March 22, 2017). "Queer Women History Forgot: Alice Dunbar-Nelson". MODERN SPIN MEDIA, LLC. Retrieved 4 April 2018.
  9. "African American literature", The Virgil Encyclopedia, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2013-12-31, pp. 35–36, doi:10.1002/9781118351352.wbve0071, ISBN 9781118351352
  10. Glenn, Valerie D. (2003). "Our Documents: 100 Milestone Documents from American History2003217Our Documents: 100 Milestone Documents from American History. Washington, DC: National History Day, National Archives & Records Administration 2002‐. Gratis URL: www.ourdocuments.gov Last visited January 2003". Reference Reviews. 17 (4): 57–58. doi:10.1108/09504120310473777. ISSN 0950-4125.
  11. 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: New York University Press, 2001. pg. 175.
  12. Perry, Patsy B. (1986). "Review of Give Us Each Day: The Diary of". Signs. 12 (1): 174–176. doi:10.1086/494309. ISSN 0097-9740. JSTOR 3174369.
  13. "About Alice Dunbar-Nelson", Department of English, College of LAS, University of Illinois, 1988.
  14. "Alice Dunbar-Nelson". University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. Retrieved April 22, 2018.
  15. Maglott, Stephen A. (2017). "Alice Dunbar-Neslon". The Ubuntu Biography Project.
  16. Johnson, Wilma J (2007). "Alice Ruth Moore Dunbar". Black Past.
  17. "Essays by Alice Dunbar-Nelson", Modern American Poetry, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.
  18. Brown-Guillory, Elizabeth (1988). Their Place on the Stage: Black Women Playwrights in America. New York City, New York: Greenwood Press. ISBN 9780313259852 – via Internet Archive.
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