Dunbar came from a poor family. After his father left, his mother supported the family by working as a washerwoman. One of the families she worked for was the family of Orville and Wilbur Wright. Paul attended Dayton's Central High School with the two. When Matilda was a slave she heard a lot of poems by the families she worked for. She loved poetry and encouraged her children to read poetry as well. Dunbar began writing and reciting poetry as early as age six.

Paul was one of the most popular poets of his time and was the first black American writer to achieve national and international reputation. He was not only a poet, but also a novelist, short story writer, writer of articles and dramatic sketches, plays and lyrics for musical compositions. His first volume of poetry, "Oak and Ivy" was published in 1893. Many of his poems and stories were written in Afro-American dialect, of w

Another myth was that Dunbar's poetry avoided the racial issues of his time. Even though many of his poems convey the life of personal vision with no attention to racial or social detail, a lot of his poems celebrate the black tradition. They eulogize black heroes in war or peace; praise whites who have helped the cause of black liberation, while condemning those who perpetrate injustices towards blacks; defend the black community and satirize racist institutions. "We Wear the Mask" and "Ode to Ethiopia" is merely the most familiar of his works of protest against racial affirmation. In "We Wear the Mask" it describes how blacks have to sometimes shield the sadness and sorrow within to hide our true feelings of oppression. We must not let the oppressor know otherwise our true feelings. In an editorial in a issue of the Dayton Tattler in 1890, Dunbar states, "You know well that the Afro-American is not one to remain silent under oppression or even fancied oppression. When kicking is needed they know how to kick (Revell 48). In Dunbar's young manhood, Fredrick Douglas pronounced him the most promising man of his race. Contrary to the myth, he possessed an abundance of racial fire.

A few misconceptions about Dunbar's poetic achievement prevailed during the past ninety years. One myth was that Dunbar disliked his own work in dialect and was forced to write dialect by editors. It may be so that his dialect verse was more popular than his poetry in standard English, but this was true for his black readers as well as white. In an English interview in 1897, Dunbar states, "I must confess my fondest love is for the Negro pieces.... These little songs I sing because I must. They have grown instinctively in me.... [The] Poems form in my mind long before they are written on

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Approximate Word count = 1206
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)