Alice Dunbar Nelson: Creole Poet and Renaissance Woman

Alice Moore Dunbar Nelson was born in New Orleans in 1875 to Patricia and Joseph Moore and raised in the Creole culture of the Crescent City. Her childhood in New Orleans is described by scholars as humble; however the precocious and fair-skinned daughter of a former slave rose to become one of the most important figures of the Harlem Renaissance (Gates 936). From early on in her life, she exhibited varied interests and aptitudes at the cello, mandolin, and violin; as well as writing and acting (Gates et al. 936). In 1892 she graduated from Straight University (now Dillard) and began a career as a teacher in the school system of New Orleans. By 1895 she had published her first volume of short stories and poems entitled Violets and Other Tales. She achieved local recognition for her poetry, which garnered her the affectionate attentions of poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. It was the common subject of poetry that precipitated an ongoing correspondence between Alice Moore and the accomplished poet from Ohio, whom she married shortly thereafter in a "secret ceremony" in New York. However, their marriage only lasted eight years, from 1898-1906 (Modern American Poetry ). When her marriage to Dunbar dissolved, she moved to Wilmington, Delaware and resumed her teaching.

Dunbar Nelson gained distinction for achievements in multiple genres: poetry, narrative, literary criticism, journalism, and sketches of Creole life. Though she made a clear distinction between imaginative work and the political task of journalism, Dunbar Nelson occasionally 'violat[ed] her dictum, by exploring themes concerned with suffrage and ethnicity in her literary pieces. In her educational and political life, as well as in her art, she was concerned with issues affecting women and African Americans--issues that led her into the almost exclusively journalistic category that characterized her later career. Gloria Hull of the The Modern American Poetry site observes the currency of Dunbar Nelson's literary oeuvre, saying that:

"Dunbar-Nelson addressed the issues that confronted African-Americans and women of her time. In 1915, she served as field organizer for the woman's suffrage movement for the Middle Atlantic states; she was later field representative for the Woman's Committee of the Council of Defense in 1918 and, in 1924, she campaigned for the passage of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill" (Hull). 

In an autobiographical piece entitled "Brass Ankles," Dunbar Nelson discloses the issues she encountered concerning the Color Line. She reveals that during her upbringing in the Creole culture of New Orleans, that she often found herself excised from white cultures for her African American heritage; and to near the same extent, ousted by the African American culture for her complexion as near-white. Furthermore, scholars observe that Dunbar-Nelson's poetry was often rejected by publishers the more decidedly political and racially centered, it became(W). 

Dunbar Nelson died in 1935, some six years after the Harlem Renaissance period had died; yet she left behind a body of work--both political and lyrical--that reflects the life and work of a woman dedicated to the concerns of her gender and race. In what ways does Alice Dunbar Nelson's life and career build on or speak to the other texts we've discussed?