The Booker T. Washington Papers, Vol.4, page 204, Aug. 1896, U. of Illinois Press

The page presentation framework of the Booker T. Washington papers is designed to provide researchers worldwide with searchable access to the thousands of pages comprising the fourteen volumes, most of which are out of print. Adapted from the National Academy Press's Open Book framework, this framework allows searching down to the page level, provides sorting of search results chronologically, enables easy navigation across multiple volumes, and allows page-by-page local printing (via PDF) of every page.

[ Top of Page ]

[ Home ]

[ Contact Us ]

[ Help ]

OCRed data provided for searching only.
The BOOKER T. WASHINGTON Papers a long and hard fight. I have gotten nothing without working for it and have contested every bit of the ground over which I have passed. With Best wishes, I am Sincerely Yours, Paul Laurence Dunbar TLS Con. ~6 BTW Papers DLC. ~ Paul Laurence Dunbar (~87~-~906), born in Dayton, Ohio, became the foremost black poet of his era. He attended Steele High School in Dayton, where he was president of the literary society and editor of the High School Times. Unable to pursue his ambition of becoming a lawyer, he began working as an elevator operator. Meanwhile his poems appeared in the Dayton Herald, and in 189~? he published at his own expense a collection entitled Oak and Ivy, selling the booklets to the people who rode the elevator. In 1895, with the help of two sponsors from Toledo, he published Majors and Minors, which was favorably reviewed by William Dean Howells in Harper's Weekly in 1896. The book then began to sell very well, and in 1896 he published Lyrics of Lowly Life, considered his best collectior~. His success then assured, he began to lecture and write full time, and he traveled in 1897 to England. From 1897 to 1898 he served as an assistant in the Library of Congress. In 1909 Dunbar was separated from his wife, Alice Ruth Moore, better known as Alice Dunbar Nelson, after five years of marriage. At this time Dunbar's health declined, partly because of alcoholism, and he returned to Dayton, where he died in 1906. His other works include The Sport of the Gods (~898), The Uncalled (~899), The Love of Landry (~899), and The Fanatics (agony. Dunbar had a rather close if sometimes strained relationship with BTW. Dunbar recognized that industrial education was no panacea, but he saw in BTW a great leader and in Tuskegee a great endeavor worthy of several laudatory poems. (Brawley, Paul Laurence Dunbar.) From Henry Stanley Newman Leominster, ''England] 3 Augt 1896 Dear Brother I have received your letter & have thought it over. You are doing a grand work in the South, for which I praise God. I have been to Hampton when dear Gent Armstrong was there. I have beers to Captain Pratt's.~ I have stayed at Southland College, Ark. You ask what Salary we can offer for a Missionary for Pemba. We do not want a man who comes for salary & we cannot make an offer. Such men had better stay in the States, but on Pemba are 87,ooo slaves, snatched from their village homes in the heart of Africa, & transported by the wretched Arabs to the Clove Plantations on the fertile island of Pemba. Our Government has promised that they shall Co4