College (which has since become Dillard Univer-
sity). Dunbar-Nelson’s literary career began in the
1890s when she published collections of short sto-
ries and poetry to much critical acclaim. Her corre-
spondence with Paul Laurence Dunbar, begun when
she wrote him to praise his poems, eventually led to
marriage in 1898. The union lasted for four years
before they separated; Paul Dunbar died of compli-
cations from tuberculosis in 1906.
Dunbar-Nelson relocated to Wilmington,
Delaware. She began her 18-year teaching ap-
pointment at Howard High School, where she
eventually became English Department chair. In
1918, she published “Hope Deferred” in THECRI-
SISand also penned a play entitled Mine Eyes Have
Seen.Like ANNAJULIACOOPER, who founded a
night school for working African Americans, Dun-
bar-Nelson diversified her educational outreach
and established the Delaware Industrial School For
Colored Girls in 1924.
Although she produced the bulk of her writ-
ing before the Harlem Renaissance, Dunbar-Nel-
son provided models of regionalist and domestic
fiction that surely influenced other writers of the
period. She remained committed to African-
American excellence, education, and intellectual
development.
Bibliography
Hull, Gloria, ed. Give Us This Day: The Diary of Alice
Dunbar-Nelson.New York: W. W. Norton & Com-
pany, 1984.
———. Love, Sex, and Poetry: Three Women Writers of the
Harlem Renaissance.Bloomington: Indiana Univer-
sity Press, 1987.
Roses, Lorraine Elena, and Ruth Elizabeth Randolph.
Harlem Renaissance and Beyond: Literary Biographies
of 100 Black Women Writers, 1900–1945.Boston: G.
K. Hall & Co., 1990.
Dunbar News
The newspaper published by the residents of the
Dunbar Apartments on Seventh and Eighth
Streets in HARLEM. The biweekly publication grew
from announcements about issues and events per-
tinent to residents to literary columns that in-
cluded, on at least one occasion, a poem submitted
by LANGSTONHUGHES.
Dunbar Speaker and Entertainer
One of two anthologies that ALICE MOORE
DUNBAR-NELSON, the author and former wife of
Paul Laurence Dunbar, produced. Published in
1920, the volume, like Masterpieces of Negro Elo-
quence(1914), provided materials that could be
used to support oratorical training.Bibliography
Dunbar, Mrs. Paul Laurence, W. S. Scarborough, and
Reverdy C. Ransom. Paul Laurence Dunbar, Poet
Laureate of the Negro Race.Philadelphia: Reverdy C.
Ransom, 1914.Duncan, Thelma(1902–unknown)
Educated at HOWARDUNIVERSITY, the WASHING-
TON, D.C., school that counted LEWISALEXAN-
DER,ZORANEALEHURSTON,MAYMILLER, and
GWENDOLYN BENNETT among its students and
faculty, Duncan graduated with honors in music.
She, like Hurston, enjoyed a fruitful start to her
writing career at the school; her first play, THE
DEATHDANCE,was performed first by the Howard
drama group, University Players.
Duncan, a St. Louis, Missouri, native, gave
every impression that she would become an estab-
lished playwright of the Harlem Renaissance. She
wrote Sacrificein 1930 and Black Magic,a comedy,
in 1931. Unfortunately, Duncan disappeared from
the literary scene after completing that work.Bibliography
Roses, Lorraine Elena, and Ruth Elizabeth Randolph.
Harlem Renaissance and Beyond: Literary Biographies
of 100 Black Women Writers, 1900–1945.Boston: G.
K. Hall & Co., 1990.Dust Tracks on a RoadZora Neale Hurston
(1942)
The engagingly vivid but controversial autobiogra-
phy that the accomplished writer ZORA NEALE
HURSTONpublished shortly after the end of the
Harlem Renaissance.
Hurston began work on her memoir because
her publisher urged her to do so. She was quite
open with friends and colleagues about the reser-
vations that she had about the project. In a Febru-130 Dunbar News