Alice Dunbar Nelson was an American poet, journalist, and activist. Among the first generation born free in the South in the post-Civil War reconstruction period, she made her way north and became a prominent figure in the Harlem Renaissance.
In 1895, Dunbar-Nelson’s first collection of short stories and poems, Violets and Other Tales, was published by The Monthly Review. In 1897, she co-founded and taught at the White Rose Mission, an establishment in Manhattan that offered shelter, education, and refuge to black women moving from the South.
After years of correspondence, she married the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar in 1898, however the marriage was an unhappy one. Paul was physically and sexually abusive.[1] After he beat her nearly to death, she left him in 1902, although they never legally divorced. Paul Dunbar died in 1906, officially ending the marriage.
In 1916, she married the poet and civil rights activist Robert J. Nelson. During their marriage, they worked together to publish the play Masterpieces of Negro Experience (1914). They remained wed for the rest of their lives.
Dunbar-Nelson also had relationships with women throughout her life, including with fellow journalist Fay M. Jackson and the artist Helene Ricks London. She wrote about both of these relationships in her diary.[2]
In her activism, Dunbar-Nelson fought tirelessly for both African American and women’s rights throughout her life. She campaigned for women’s suffrage, was a dedicated educator, and advocated for the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill. In 1928, she became the Executive Secretary of the American Friends Inter-Racial Peace Committee.
Alice Dunbar-Nelson wrote poetry and short stories throughout her life. Starting in the 1920s, she also became a successful columnist, and her articles and essays were published in many prominent newspapers, magazines, and journals.
Her diary was published in 1984 and remains one of the few diaries of a 19th-century African-American woman. In it, she wrote about her bisexuality, describing her social circles as “a thriving lesbian and bisexual subculture among black suffragists and clubwomen”.