Alice Dunbar Nelson

 “In every race, in every nation, and in every clime in every period of history there is always an eager-eyed group of youthful patriots who seriously set themselves to right the wrongs done to their race or nation or . . . art or self-expression.”

Alice Dunbar Nelson (1875 – 1935) was an American poet, journalist, and political activist. Among the first free-born generation in the South following the Civil War. She was one of the prominent African Americans involved in the artistic flourishing of the Harlem Renaissance, achieving prominence as a poet, author, journalist, editor, and activist for women's rights.

Alice Ruth Moore was born OTD (July 19) 1875 in New Orleans to a formerly enslaved black seamstress, Patricia Wright and a white seaman, Joseph Moore. Her parents were middle-class and part of the city's multiracial Creole community.

Moore graduated from the teaching program at Straight University in 1892 and worked as a teacher in the public school system of New Orleans. Alongside teaching, she studied art and music, learning to play piano and cello.

In 1895, Alice's first collection of short stories and poems, Violets and Other Tales, was published by The Monthly Review. Around this time, Moore moved to Boston and then New York City. She co-founded and taught at the White Rose Mission in Manhattan.

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“If I had known, two years ago, the impotence of love, the vainness of a kiss, how barren a caress, mayhap my soul to higher things have soarn.”

Alice soon struck up a correspondence with poet and journalist Paul Laurence Dunbar, who had been by her work in The Woman's Era. He wrote to her on April 17, 1895, an introduction which would lead to frequent communication. In their letters, Paul asked Alice about her interest in race. She responded that she thought of her characters as "simple human beings" and believed that many writers focused on race too closely. Although she later seemed to bend on this question, and Paul disagreed, the two continued to communicate romantically through their letters.

Their correspondence revealed tensions about the sexual freedoms of the sexes. Before their marriage, Paul told Alice that she kept him from "yielding to temptations", although he tried to make Alice jealous by writing of other women he had met in Paris. However, Alice did not rise to the bait and continued to maintain an emotional distance from Paul. However, after corresponding for a few years, Alice moved to Washington DC to join Paul Laurence Dunbar, with whom she eloped in 1898. Sadly however, their marriage proved tumultuous, exacerbated by Dunbar's declining health due to tuberculosis, alcoholism developed from doctor-prescribed whiskey consumption, and depression. Even before their marriage, Paul raped Alice. Alice forgave him on account of his alcoholism which they both blamed for the assault. However, it was public knowledge that Paul would often beat Alice. She also suffered with peritonitis “brought on by his kicks." In 1902, after he beat her nearly to death, she finally left him. He was reported to also have been disturbed by her lesbian affairs. The pair separated in 1902, but were never divorced before Paul Dunbar's death in 1906.

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“The rainbow is elusive, and its colors but the illumination of tears.”

After her divorce, Alice moved to Delaware where she taught at Howard High School for over ten years. 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 Wilmington teaching position and enrolled at Cornell University, returning to Wilmington in 1908. In 1910, she married Henry A. Callis, a prominent physician and professor at Howard University but this marriage ended in divorce.

In 1916, she found lasting love with her third and final husband, the poet and civil rights activist Robert J. Nelson. She worked with him to publish the play Masterpieces of Negro Experience (1914), which was only shown once at Howard High School in Wilmington. She joined him in becoming active in local and regional politics. However, during this time she also had intimate relationships with women, including Howard High School principal Edwina Kruse and the activist Fay Jackson Robinson. It is unknown whether her husband was aware of these affairs, but they remained together for the rest of their lives.

In 1930, Alice travelled across America, lecturing, covering thousands of miles and presenting at thirty-seven educational institutions. She also spoke at YWCAs, YMCAs, and churches.

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From a young age, Alice Dunbar Nelson was interested in activities that would empower Black women. In 1894, she became a charter member of the Phillis Wheatley Club in New Orleans, contributing her writing skills. To expand their horizons, the Wheatley Club collaborated with the Woman's Era Club. She worked with the Woman's Era Club's monthly newspaper, The Woman's Era. Targeting refined and educated women, it was the first newspaper for and created by African-American women. Alice's work with the paper marked the beginning of her career as a journalist and an activist.

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 Delaware, and put more effort into journalism on leading topics. In 1914, she co-founded the Equal Suffrage Study Club, and 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. During this time, Dunbar-Nelson worked in various ways to foster political change. It is said, "She stayed very active in the NAACP; she cofounded a much-needed reform school in Delaware for African American girls; she worked for the American Friends Inter-Racial Peace Committee; she spoke at rallies against the sentencing of the Scottsboro defendants."

From 1913 to 1914, she was co-editor and writer for the A.M.E. Review, an influential church publication produced by the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME Church). 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.

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“His mission? Well, there is but one…To be a happy idler, to lounge and sun, and dreaming, pass his long-drawn days away.”

Alice Dunbar-Nelson supported America's involvement in World War I, which she as a means to ending racial violence in America. She organized events to encourage other black Americans to support the war. She referenced the war in many of her works, most famously in her 1918 poem "I Sit and Sew", in which Nelson writes from the perspective of a woman who feels suppressed from engaging directly with the war effort. Because she was not able to enlist in the war herself, Nelson wrote propagandistic pieces such as Mine Eyes Have Seen (1918), a play that encouraged African American men to enlist in the army. These works display Nelson's belief that racial equality could be achieved through military service and sacrificing one's self to their nation. Sadly, she would be wrong.

From c.1920, 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. She was a popular speaker and had an active schedule of lectures. In the late 19th century, it was still unusual for women to work outside of the home, let alone an African-American woman, and journalism was a hostile, male-dominated field. In her diary, she spoke about the struggles associated with the profession: "Damn bad luck I have with my pen. Some fate has decreed I shall never make money by it" (Diary, 366). She discussed being denied pay for her articles and issues she had with receiving proper recognition for her work. For example, in 1920, Nelson was removed from teaching at Howard High School for attending Social Justice Day on October 1 against the will of Principal Ray Wooten. Wooten sacked Nelson for "political activity" and incompatibility. Despite the backing of the Board of Education's Conwell Banton, who opposed Nelson's firing, Nelson decided not to return. In 1928, Nelson became Executive Secretary of the American Friends Inter-Racial Peace Committee. In 1928, she spoke at The American Negro Labor Congress Forum in Philadelphia, presenting a paper on Inter-Racial Peace and its Relation to Labor. Dunbar-Nelson also wrote for the Washington Eagle.

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“And now – unwittingly you’ve made me dream, of violets, and my soul’s forgotten dream.”

In 1932, Alice moved from Delaware to Philadelphia when her husband joined the Pennsylvania Athletic Commission. During this time, her health declined, and she died from a heart ailment on September 18, 1935, at the age of 60.

Her papers were collected by the University of Delaware. Her diary, published in 1984, detailed her life during the years 1921 and 1926 to 1931 and 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." Her diary addressed issues such as family, friendship, sexuality, health, professional problems, travels, and often financial difficulties.

Dunbar-Nelson explored the role of black women in the workforce, education, and the antilynching movement. Her writings express her belief of equality between the races and the sexes. She believed that African Americans should have equal access to the educational institution, jobs, healthcare, transportation and other constitutionally granted rights.. 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.

Much of Dunbar-Nelson's writing was about the colour line – both white and black colour lines. In an autobiographical piece, "Brass Ankles Speaks", she discusses the difficulties she faced growing up mixed-race in Louisiana. She recalls the isolation and the sensation of not belonging to or being accepted by either race, being perceived as both “too white” and “too black”. She wrote that being multiracial was hard because "the 'Brass Ankles' must bear the hatred of their own and the prejudice of the white race". Much of Dunbar-Nelson's writing was rejected because she wrote about the colour line, oppression, and themes of racism. However, she was able to publish her writing, when the themes of racism and oppression were more palatable to the public.