On Visiting the Dayton
Paul Laurence Dunbar 1872 - 1906
The citizens of Dayton
Ohio
in conjunction with the national parks
have established a place to nurture the memory
of the Wright Brothers and Paul Dunbar
“We wear the mask that
grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks
and shades our eyes,—“
The only black in his high school year
Paul was elected class president
was the teen-age editor of the Dayton Tattler
friend Orville Wright his publisher
“With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad
subtleties.”
Crowds flock to the Wilber and Orville stuff
but here at the park interpretive center
the ranger (a woman
of color herself)
seems surprised when asked for the Dunbar
film
“I know why the caged
bird beats his wing
Till its blood is red on the cruel bars; “
And how the words poured out of him
from this young son of southern slaves
into a country not yet ready
for him and his brothers and sisters
“ And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
And they pulse again
with a keener sting—“
the world was ready for man to fly
and a hundred years later
we
are cleaved by the fate
of Paul Dunbar’s brothers and sisters
Frank Kearns
with selections from We
Wear the Mask and Sympathy
PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR 1872 -
1906
