Heavenly belated birthday wishes Paul Laurence Dunbar! Born June 27, 1872, Paul Laurence Dunbar was an African American poet, novelist, and short story writer 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 began writing stories and verse when he was a child. He died in 1906.


Read some of his poems here: