July 19th, Friday | Alice Moore Dunbar Nelson

The date is July 18th, Thursday, and today I’m coming to you from Portland, Oregon. 

On this day in 1848, the Seneca Falls Convention, also known as the Women's Rights Convention began in Seneca Falls, New York. It was a gathering of women and men and their goal was to come out with a Declaration of Sentiments. Notable attendees included Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Amy Post, Amelia Bloomer, Eunice Newton Foote, and Frederick Douglass. 

Going into the Convention, there was a question as to whether or not to include the right to vote in the Declaration of Sentiments. After a spirited debate among the ladies and handful of gentlemen, Elizabeth Cady Stanton penned it in. 

Today is the birthday of Alice Moore Dunbar Nelson, African American poet and journalist. 

Alice was born in 1875 in New Orleans to mixed race parents. She grew up entrenched in Creole culture, but noticed that because of her fairer skin she was quite isolated, particularly as a child. She was not white enough for the whites, but not black enough for the blacks. 

She enrolled in a teacher training program and became a teacher upon graduating in 1892 at the age of 17. In her spare time she began writing, honing her skills and producing her first book of short stories in 1895, titled Violets and Other Tales.

She married three times. Her first marriage was to fellow poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, who we got to know back on his birthday in June. Paul Dunbar was taken with Alice Moore after seeing her picture and her writing in an issue of the Boston Monthly Globe. He started courting her through letters in 1895. Two years later the pair finally met in person and married the next year when Alice was 23, settling in Washington, D.C.

The pair were compatible, but after Paul’s diagnoses of tuberculosis, things when South. Or rather they went West. Alice moved to Colorado with Paul on doctor’s orders. Also on doctor’s orders, Paul had begun drinking whiskey regularly. Sadly, the ‘whiskey prescription’ had turned Paul into an alcoholic and he became abusive toward Alice. Alice left Colorado and Paul for Delaware in 1902.

She continued teaching and writing on the side, and briefly attended Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. Paul died in 1906, freeing Alice from any commitment, and she married again in 1910 to a professor and successful doctor from Howard University. This married again ended in separation and then divorce. 

Her third marriage was to another poet, Robert J. Nelson, who was also an activist. Alice’s writing began to trend more toward journalism. Her fiction and poetry turned more biting in their social critics of America, and she became active in civil rights and women’s suffrage.

Her marriage to Nelson was a happy one and he seemed to give Alice plenty of independence, which suited her well. 

We have lots of information on Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson thanks to the diaries she kept. In 1984, her journals were published in the book Give Us Each Day, offering insight not only onto Alice’s personal thoughts and feelings, but also onto what life was like for an African-American woman. 

Today’s poem is simply titled “Sonnet” by our birthday poet Alice Dunbar Nelson. I’ve held on to this one for a few months and am very glad to be sharing it with you today. 

Sonnet

Alice Dunbar-Nelson

I had not thought of violets of late,      

The wild, shy kind that spring beneath your feet

In wistful April days, when lovers mate

And wander through the fields in raptures sweet.       

The thought of violets meant florists’ shops,          

And bows and pins, and perfumed papers fine;

And garish lights, and mincing little fops

And cabarets and songs, and deadening wine. 

So far from sweet real things my thoughts had strayed, 

I had forgot wide fields, and clear brown streams;            

The perfect loveliness that God has made,— 

Wild violets shy and Heaven-mounting dreams.

And now—unwittingly, you’ve made me dream

Of violets, and my soul’s forgotten gleam.

Thank you for listening. I’m you host, Virginia Combs, wishing you a good morning, a better day, and a lovely weekend.