United States

Paul Laurence Dunbar

1872–1906

Born in Dayton, Ohio, in 1872 to formerly enslaved parents, Dunbar published his first book at twenty-one and died at thirty-three. He wrote in polished standard English and in Black dialect, on dignity, love, oppression and the mask worn in public. “We Wear the Mask” is one of the defining poems of African American literature, and his work helped establish Black experience as a central subject of American poetry.