Paul Laurence Dunbar: Beyond the Mask

Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906), the father of African-American Letters, remains an inspiration for writers, painters, sculptors, composers, and choreographers today. Famous for poems such as “We Wear the Mask” and “Sympathy” (the first line of which became the title for Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings), Dunbar during his brief life wrote novels, short stories, lyrics, plays, and civil rights essays as well. His talent and ambition carried him from elevator boy to international prominence as a performer and spokesperson for justice. Paul Laurence Dunbar: Beyond the Mask explores his relationships with luminaries such as William Dean Howells, Frederick Douglass, and Booker T. Washington, his stormy marriage, the tension between his dialect and standard poetry, and the multiple cultural legacies he left behind.Paul Laurence Dunbar: Beyond the Mask is a production of the Central Region Humanities Center at Ohio University, an institute devoted to teaching, research, and public programming on cultures of the states of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Kentucky, and West Virginia.