Living Mural: Paul Laurence Dunbar

Paul Laurence Dunbar (June 27, 1872 - February 9, 1906) was an American poet, novelist, and playwright of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born in Dayton, Ohio, to parents who had been enslaved in Kentucky before the American Civil War, Dunbar started to write as a child and was president of his high school's literary society. He published his first poems at the age of 16 in a Dayton newspaper. Much of his more popular work in his lifetime was written in the Negro dialect associated with the antebellum South. His work was praised by William Dean Howells, a leading critic associated with Harper's Weekly, and Dunbar was one of the first African-American writers to establish a national reputation. He wrote the lyrics for the musical comedy In Dahomey (1903), the first all-African-American musical produced on Broadway; it also toured in the United States and the United Kingdom. The Dunbar Hotel (1945-1974), named for Paul Laurence Dunbar, was a 6-story building originally built in 1897 as an apartment house for white residents; after closing briefly in the early 1940s and reopening as The Dunbar Hotel, it contained 485 bedrooms with baths. In the days of segregated Washington, The Dunbar Hotel offered an oasis for many African-Americans, including prominent local figures and major entertainers who traveled to DC to appear in the numerous theaters along U Street.

Washington, District of Columbia · United States