Alice Dunbar-Nelson

Alice Dunbar Nelson (around 1902)

Alice Ruth Moore Dunbar-Nelson (born July 19, 1875 in New Orleans as Alice Ruth Moore , † September 18, 1935 in Philadelphia ) was an American writer, journalist and civil rights activist. She belonged to the Afro-American literary movement " Harlem Renaissance ".

Life

Alice Dunbar-Nelson was born in New Orleans in 1875 into a middle-class family. Her mother, Patricia Wright, was a seamstress and former slave; her father, Joseph Moore, was an employee of the American Merchant Navy . Both were active members of the town's Creole community. At a time when only around one percent of Americans were attending college (including hardly any African-Americans), Dunbar graduated from Straight University (later Dillard University ) in 1892 and then worked as a teacher at a public school in New Orleans.

In 1895 the writer published short stories and poems in her first book, Violets and Other Tales . She first moved to Boston , and in 1897 to New York City . After co- founding the White Rose Mission girls' school in Brooklyn , she also worked there as a teacher. She soon met the poet and journalist Paul Laurence Dunbar . He was so enthusiastic about her writing and a photo in a literary magazine that he wrote to her. The two began a lively correspondence, and after two years Alice Moore moved to live with him in Washington, DC

The couple married in 1898, but the Dunbars separated four years later, but never divorced. Paul Dunbar suffered from depression and alcoholism and is said to have beaten his wife almost to death in 1902 because of their lesbian affairs. She then left him and moved to Wilmington , Delaware , where she taught at Howard High School for more than ten years . Paul Dunbar died a little later in 1906.

During those summers, Alice Dunbar taught courses for dark-skinned students at Dover State College (later Delaware State College ) and taught for two years at the Hampton Institute (now Hampton University ) summer courses . In 1907 and 1908 she took leave of absence from her teaching position and enrolled as a student at Cornell University . In 1910 she married Henry Arthur Callis , a noted doctor and professor at Howard University , but that marriage also failed.

In 1913 and 1914, Dunbar was co-editor and editor of the AME Church Review , an influential journal for the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME Church). From 1920 she was co-editor of the Wilmington Advocate , a progressive newspaper for the black population of the region. She also published the anthology The Dunbar Speaker and Entertainer .

Through her work as a journalist, she met the poet and civil rights activist Robert J. Nelson and married him in 1916. Her political activity, which she had practiced since her youth, shifted to the suffragette movement in the Central Atlantic from 1915 . In 1918 she became a member of the Woman's Committee of the Council of National Defense and worked for the Circle of Negro War Relief . In 1924, Dunbar-Nelson campaigned for the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill to be passed . The legislative initiative of the MP Leonidas C. Dyer should make lynching in the future a criminal offense, but failed because of the resistance of the southern states in Congress .

Alice Dunbar-Nelson became increasingly involved in the rights of women and African Americans in the 1920s and 1930s. In addition to other short stories and poems, from 1920 onwards she also published columns, articles, essays and reviews for magazines, newspapers and specialist journals, in which she increasingly took a stand against exclusion and racism. In 1920 she also worked for the Delaware Republican State Committee and helped found the Industrial School for Colored Girls in Delaware. From 1928 to 1931 she was executive director of the American Friends Inter-Racial Peace Committee. As a sought-after speaker, she gave many lectures during these years.

In 1932 Dunbar-Nelson moved from Delaware to Philadelphia , where her husband became a member of the Pennsylvania Athletic Commission. During this time the author fell ill with a heart condition. She finally succumbed to her illness on September 18, 1935. She was buried in Wilmington and Brandywine Cemetery in Wilmington. Your estate is administered by the University of Delaware .

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Dunbar-Nelson's writings deal primarily with the problems faced by African Americans and women in the first 30 years of the 20th century. She has mainly written for The Crisis , Opportunity, the Journal of Negro History, and Messenger. 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 examined in particular the role of black women in the world of work, education and the civil rights movement. Time and again, Dunbar-Nelson campaigned for equality in all areas. She fought for equal access for minorities and women to education, work, health, transport and other constitutionally guaranteed rights.

Many of Alice Dunbar-Nelson's articles were rejected because she was not clearly African American because of her light skin color or because she was not fair enough. Only a few major magazines and newspapers published their work because it was difficult to “market” it. Dunbar-Nelson wrote a lot about this strict division between whites and blacks. In her autobiographical piece Brass Ankles ("brass ankles" - a nickname for an ethnic minority with European, African and Native American ancestors), Dunbar-Nelson described the problems of growing up as a light-skinned African American in Louisiana. She remembered how lonely she felt as a child and how she felt about not belonging to one group or the other and not being accepted by either. As a child, she was often insulted by her peers as a “half-white nigger”, and later she was treated with reserve: white colleagues she was not “thoroughbred” and black colleagues were not dark-skinned enough. She wrote that it was very difficult not to be black or white because the "fair-skinned niggers, the Brass Ankles , had to endure both the hatred of their own people and the prejudices of the whites".

Her diary was only published in 1984, describing her life in 1921 and between 1926 and 1931. The author wrote vividly about family, friendship, sexuality, health, travel, professional problems and financial difficulties. Her notes give valuable insights into the life of black women during this time.

Alice Dunbar-Nelson was included in the Daughters of Africa anthology published in 1992 by Margaret Busby in London and New York.

Honors

Dunbar-Nelson was an honorary member of the Delta Sigma Theta student association .

Publications

• Violets and Other Tales . Monthly Review, Boston 1895 ( digitized version )
• The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories , 1899
• Wordsworth's Use of Milton's Description of the Building of Pandemonium . Modern Language Notes, 1909
• Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence . Bookery Publishers, New York 1914
• People of Color in Louisiana . Journal of Negro History, 1917
• Mine Eyes Have Seen , play published in The Crisis , 1918
• The Dunbar speaker and entertainer: containing the best prose and poetic selections by and about the Negro race, with programs arranged for special entertainments , Anthologie, JL Nichols & Co., Naperville 1920
• Caroling Dusk - a collection of African-American poets . 1927
• Snow in October and Sonnet . 1927
• The Colored United States . The Messenger, 1924
• 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
• So It Seems to Alice Dunbar-Nelson , 1930, column for the Pittsburgh Courier
• Gloria T. Hull (Ed.): Give Us Each Day: The Diary of Alice Dunbar-Nelson . Norton, New York 1984

literature

• Eugene Wesley Metcalf: The letters of Paul and Alice Dunbar: a private history , doctoral thesis, University of California, Irvine 1973
• Gloria T. Hull: Color, sex & poetry: three women writers of the Harlem Renaissance . Indiana University Press, Bloomington 1987, pp. 33-106
• Gloria T. Hull: The works of Alice Dunbar-Nelson . 3 volumes, Oxford University Press, New York 1988
• Patsy B. Perry: Alice Dunbar-Nelson . In: JC Smith (Ed.): Notable Black American Women . Gale Research, Detroit 1992
• Lorraine Elena Roses, Ruth Elizabeth Randolph: Harlem's glory: Black women writing, 1900-1950 . Harvard University Press, Cambridge 1996
• Eleanor Alexander: 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, New York 2001
• Emmanuel S Nelson: African American authors, 1745–1945: bio-bibliographical critical sourcebook . Greenwood Press, Westport 2000
• Eleanor Alexander: Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow. The Courtship and Marriage of Paul Laurence Dunbar and Alice Ruth Moore . Penguin Group, New York 2001
• Crystal N. Feimster: Southern Horrors: Women and the Politics of Rape and Lynching . Harvard University Press, Cambridge 2011

Web links

Commons : Alice Dunbar-Nelson  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Alice Dunbar-Nelson Papers , University of Delaware Library
• About Alice Dunbar-Nelson , Department of English, College of LAS, University of Illinois, 1988.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Gloria T. Hull: Color, sex & poetry: Three women writers of the Harlem Renaissance . Indiana University Press, Bloomington 1987, pp. 33-106
2. ^ Daniel Wallace: Twentieth century Negro literature; or, A cyclopedia of thought on the vital topics relating to the American Negro . JL Nichols & Co., Atlanta 1902, p. 138 ( digitized version )
3. ^ Lillian Faderman , Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America , Penguin Books, 1991, p. 98
4. ↑ Liz Highleyman: Alice Dunbar-Nelson . Lavender Media, Inc., March 13, 2008
5. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Alice Dunbar-Nelson Papers , University of Delaware Library
6. ↑ Alice Dunbar Nelson at findagrave.com, accessed March 23, 2014 (English)
7. ^ ^{A b c} About Alice Dunbar-Nelson , Department of English, College of LAS, University of Illinois, 1988.
8. ↑ Dunbar Nelson at Modern American Poetry