Alice was born in 1875 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Her mother was a former slave, and her father was White. She wrote, taught and/or lectured everywhere she lived: Louisiana, New York, Massachusetts, Washington D.C., Delaware, and Pennsylvania. She received her education from Straight University in Louisiana and Cornell University in New York. After graduating from Straight in 1892, she began teaching in the New Orleans public schools.

Her teaching career included working at the White Rose Mission in Manhattan and co-founding a reform school for girls in Delaware. Her later activism led to her being removed from her teaching position at Wilmington Delaware’s Howard High school in 1920.

In 1895 her first anthology, Violets and Other Tales was published by The Boston Monthly Review. A poem she wrote in the Review brought her to Paul Lawrence Dunbar’s attention. Several resources cite their romance as being the African American equivalent of Robert Browning’s and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s courtship. However, disagreements on how to handle race in their writing and her same gender loving relationships with women shows me their relationship wasn’t always idyllic. Dunbar became increasingly physically and emotionally abusive. She separated from him in 1902 and was still married to him when he died in 1906. During their marriage she published her next piece, The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories in 1899.

 Besides poetry she wrote articles on race relations, the limitations placed on working women, civil rights and suffrage in magazines, church related publications, academic journals and newspapers. These were topics on which she lectured as well. In 1914, she published Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence, which contained speeches made by men and women of African descent born in the US, Europe and Africa. From 1926 to 1930 she wrote a column for the Washington Eagle. She also kept a diary addressing the issues of her day. She wrote prolifically despite encountering lots of rejection because she addressed oppression and racism in her writing.

She married two more times. The second to a fellow teacher which ended in a friendly divorce. The last to Robert J. Nelson in 1916, a poet and activist to whom she remained married until her death and with whom she was active in politics, campaigning for anti-lynching laws. Like many African Americans of her day, she was a republican but not a chauvinistic one. When the republican senator from Delaware refused to vote for an anti-lunching bill, Alice campaigned and got twelve thousand new voters registered, leading to the senator’s losing reelection.

Alice died in Philadelphia in 1935 due to a heart condition at the age of 60. Having learned all this about her, I will think of her as a poet, critic, journalist, and activist who also happened to marry a famous poet. I hope that’s how you’ll think of her too.

A Portrait of Alice Dunbar

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An unexpected dare holds the key to a second chance with the disgraced Buffalo soldier she’s never stopped loving

Excerpt:

Ambrose sat down and set the plate before him. He’d let the food go cold rather than give the minister’s wife a chance to come and offer him seconds. All he wanted was enough time to pass until he could exit unapproached. Shame to let it go to waste.

A sudden tension replaced the laughter and murmuring filling the air. A heavy silence followed. Footsteps echoed toward him against the room’s worn wooden planks. The intruder came to a stop beside his seat. He shuddered.

What fresh hell is this?

He stuck a fork into the potatoes heaped before him. Perhaps a mouthful of food would convince the intruder their company was not welcome.

Then he smelled it.

Lilac powder.

Her lilac powder.

His cock stiffened with remembrance. He looked up. His vision blurred.

Hephzibah stood before there, head high, gaze fixed on him.

His fork clattered against his plate. Pain seized his heart. He clenched his hands and lowered his gaze.

Pressure, gentle and considerate, opened his hand and placed something in his palm. Once more footsteps echoed in the room’s silence. He watched her leave as wordlessly as she had arrived, taking the pain-filled comfort of her scent with her. In his palm lay a folded piece of paper. He read it then held his breath, stunned by the five words it contained.

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