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Mar 12, 2020 · The two married in 1916, and Alice Moore-Dunbar changed her legal name to Alice Dunbar-Nelson. Dunbar-Nelson’s avid involvement in the 1910s with the Women’s Suffrage Movement ignited a passionate activism for black women who were marginalized within a society that offered little to no agency for women or people of color.
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Sep 14, 2024 · Alice Dunbar Nelson was a novelist, poet, essayist, and critic associated with the early period of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and ’30s. The daughter of a Creole seaman and a black seamstress, Moore grew up in New Orleans, where she completed a two-year teacher-training program at Straight.
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May 19, 2007 · Alice Ruth Moore Dunbar-Nelson was an educator, poet, activist, and playwright. Moore was born on July 19, 1875 in New Orleans, Louisiana, into a family of mixed black, white, and Indian ancestry. Her mother, Patricia Wright, was formerly enslaved, and worked as a seamstress and washerwoman.
- Motivated by Love and Race
- Life with Dunbar
- Brought Her “Looking Glass” to Readers
- Carried Readers to ‘Steenth Street
- Mirrored Her Literary Themes in Activism
- Selected Writings
- Sources
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 Orleanssociety. By the time she
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 ...
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. S...
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 ...
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 ...
Books
(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 B...
Periodicals
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. C...
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.
Periodicals
Black Issues Book Review, March-April 2002. CLA Journal, March 1976, pp. 322-326. MELUS, Summer 1998.
On-line
“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
After a series of separations and reconciliations, Alice left Paul in 1902 and remained estranged from him until he died on February 9, 1906. In spite of their tumultuous marriage, they respected each other and the world recognized Alice Dunbar-Nelson as Paul's wife, sending her condolences.
Alice Dunbar Nelson's work in The Woman's Era captured Paul Laurence Dunbar's attention. On April 17, 1895, Paul Laurence Dunbar sent Alice a letter of introduction, which was the first of many letters that the two exchanged. In their letters, Paul asked Alice about her interest in the race question.
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Kruse often addressed Dunbar-Nelson as “my dear Alice” and “dear little child.” Dunbar-Nelson would often return the gesture by calling Kruse “Ned,” a nickname between the two women. Kruse regularly sent her gifts, hoping that her companion would have a piece of home with her.
