Peotry with Paul Dunbar
By: Jackie Castellanos
Biography
Paul Dunbar was born on june 27,1872 in Dayton, Ohio. His partents were both former slaves, but his father escaped and severed in the 5th Massachusetts Colored Cavairy Regiment and the 55th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment. On 1874 his partents separating, his mom already had two children form a pervious marriage. With the help of his mom Paul developed an intrest in poetry at the age of six. He was the only African-American at Dayton Central High school. In school he made some big acompishments by becoming a member of the debating society, editor of the school paper. president of the school's literary society, and he wrote for the Dayton community newspaper. With the help of the Wright brothers he published the Dayton Tattler an African-American newspaper. On his brithday he made his first publishment the Oak and Ivy in 1892 a book of poems. Even though his book was received well locally he still had to work has an elevator operator, so that he paid his debt with the publisher. He sold his book in the elevator for a dollor. In 1893 he met Frederick Douglass at the World Fair's. Douglass said that Paul was "the most promissing young colored man in america." Paul moved to Toledo, Ohio in 1895. With the help of his two fans attorney Charles A. Thatcher and psychiatrist Henry A. Tobey that fund his second book Majors and Minors. The second book send him to national fame, then he went over the atlantic. When he returned for england he married Alice Ruth Moore a young writer. He worked in Washington, D.C. for a year because the dust give him a trouble cases of the tuberculosis. In 1902 he and his wife seperated the case was the depression and his health prombles, which lead him to alcohol that worsin his health even more. He complished 12 books of peotry, 4 book of short stories, a play, and 5 novels. Before his death on Febuary 9, 1906.