Happy Birthday 2 Ya “Paul Laurence Dunbar” Poet & Playwright
American poet, novelist, and playwright Paul Laurence Dunbar, born June 27, 1872, was one of the first African-American writers to establish an international reputation. He wrote the lyrics for the musical comedy In Dahomey (1903), the first all-African-American musical produced on Broadway. His first collection of short stories, Folks From Dixie (1898), was an examination of racial prejudice. Dunbar wrote much of his work in conventional English, while using African-American dialect for some of it, as well regional dialects. Maya Angelou titled her autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), from a line in Dunbar’s poem Sympathy.