On Visiting the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park

On Visiting the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park

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

Dayton is left with an air force base

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

Matilda Jane Dunbar 1845-1934

What’s a mother to do

with a son as precocious as this

what’s a freed slave woman to do

but smile at a son who poured out words

in stories      on paper        in print

what’s a mother to do

but swell with a bit of maternal pride

her son a leader of literary men

what’s a mother to think

her son out traveling the world

introduced to presidents and kings

while Jim Crow churns old hatreds

what’s a mother to do but hope

that after the searing civil war

her country will come to embrace her Paul

and all of his brothers and sisters

what’s an old black woman to do

but wake in the night terrified

as footsteps and fires still hammer and cleave

the fate of his brothers and sisters



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Matilda Jane Dunbar was the mother of Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872–1906).

Born in Dayton, Ohio, and schoolmate and friend of Orville and Wilbur Wright, Paul Laurence Dunbar was one the first influential black poets in American literature.

National Park Service: Paul Laurence Dunbar's life story

The Poetry Foundation: Paul Lawrence Dunbar

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© Frank Kearns 2015