PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR DVD COLLECTION
Go to the source (Black Caucus of the American Library Association)
NEW DVD COLLECTION ON POET PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR FEATURES RECITALS BY NATION’S TOP BLACK POETS
“Paul Laurence Dunbar is the poet laureate of the Negro race.”
– Booker T. Washington
Famous 19th Century African American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar’s birthday will be celebrated with gala festivities during the weekend of June 27, 2008 at the Dunbar House in Dayton, Ohio. The national press and artists and dignitaries from all over the nation have been invited to attend. This weekend of Dunbar festivities will include a parade, dinner and a National Launch Party for several educational DVDs on Dunbar. These DVDs, known as The Paul Laurence Dunbar Collection, provide an entertaining and educational experience for poetry lovers, families and students of all ages. This DVD Collection will be a substantial educational resource for teachers and librarians all around the country.
This treasure trove of over 200 Dunbar poems and stories is important to both American Literature and African American culture. The poems are dramatically recited by the very top Dunbar storytellers and dramatic African American poets in the nation, including Nikki Giovanni, Ishmael Reed, Sonia Sanchez, Amiri Baraka, California Poet Laureate Al Young, Mitch Capel, Bobby Norfolk, Awele Makeba, Charlotte Blake-Alston, Dylan Pritchett, Sr., and Oni Lasana. The production also includes commentary and analysis by some of America’s foremost Dunbar scholars. Many famous African American poets, including Langston Hughes and Nikki Giovanni, have frequently acknowledged their debt of gratitude to Dunbar. “There is no poet, black or non-black, who measures his achievement,” Dr. Giovanni said of Dunbar. The title of Maya Angelou’s autobiography, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, is taken in homage from a stanza of Dunbar’s famous poem “Sympathy.” Even Jimi Hendrix’s anthem song “Purple Haze” draws its title from Dunbar’s description of the sublime autumn sky in Dunbar’s poem “The Old Apple Tree.”
Paul Laurence Dunbar was a most remarkable American writer. The child of slaves, Dunbar was raised in a racist and hostile America that used any means necessary to terrorize, criminalize, disenfranchise and re-enslave African Americans.
Despite the racist climate, Dunbar led an exciting and fulfilling life. He was childhood friends with Orville and Wilbur Wright. The only African American of his high school class, Dunbar was class president, editor-in-chief of the school newspaper, a member of the debate society, class poet and president of the literary society. He and Mark Twain shared the same literary agent. He was the protégé of Frederick Douglass. Frederick Douglass said of Dunbar, “I regard Paul Dunbar as the most promising young colored man in America.”
Dunbar toured America constantly, giving dramatized readings of his poetry. He was honored by President William McKinley and was awarded a ceremonial sword by Theodore Roosevelt. He was mentored by Frederick Douglass and praised by W.E.B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington and other giants of his day. The toast of Europe, Dunbar also gave a command performance before the Queen of England. He was married to poet and civil rights activist Alice Moore Dunbar. Together they were America’s African American power couple, hosting the top Black intellectuals and notables of the era in their home in Washington, D.C.
Through his work, Paul Laurence Dunbar chronicled an African American history and experience that had been distorted by white journalists and historians. Even today Dunbar’s writings are relevant. His works provide guidance, encouragement, cautionary tales and adages that help readers of all ages to better navigate through a hostile and racist society. Dunbar’s writings provide wisdom and direction for African American culture in the same way that “Poor Richard’s Almanac,” the “Mother Goose Rhymes” or the “Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales” guided white culture. This is where Dunbar achieves greatness. Dunbar gives joy, with a message, to the very young and old alike with stories such as “A Cabin Tale,” “Little Brown Baby” and “The Seedling.” He gives us all inspiration with poems such as “Keep A Song Up On De Way,” “Just Whistle A Bit” and “The Lesson.” He speaks of history in such poems as “W’en Dey ‘Listed Colored Soldiers,” “Frederick Douglass,” “The Haunted Oak,” “Goin’ Back,” “The Colored Soldiers,” “Sympathy,” “Life” and “We Wear the Mask.” His work provides so many other wonderful glimpses of the African American experience made universal.
Historian W.S. Scarborough said of Dunbar, “Every phase of Negro life has been captured by his pen as by a camera.” Past generations of African Americans were raised on the readings and recitals of Dunbar’s works. Dunbar was widely read, memorized and recited as a standard part of the African American dinner hour and school until integration caused him to be dropped him from the school curriculum. Without any personal connection to the curriculum through such role models, African American children became lost, bored and alienated.
Dunbar’s poetry is the missing link, the ignition switch, between the flat, written page and the wonder and the imagination of the Black child. Every child needs heroes and role models with whom they can identify. Black children need parables and universally applicable adventure tales and examples of other Blacks who met and overcame similar challenges in life through perseverance and a positive attitude.
Dunbar has fun and exciting stories. He has stories that encourage. He has stories on perseverance. He has stories on the importance of keeping a positive attitude in the darkest hours. He has drama stories. He gives hope to the hopeless. He gives advice on love to the wooer and wooed. He has stories to warn the naive. He has stories on how to handle grief. He gives history lessons on the untold struggles of previous African American generations as they triumphed despite Jim Crow Laws, fire-bombings, sabotage and overwhelming odds at every phase of American history. These are the stories that give the Black child inspiration and connection and a sense of history, culture and social responsibility. These are the stories that teach our children the subtleties and nuances of the English language through stories that interest them. These are the stories that bolster and challenge our children to keep them from falling behind and then dropping out when the going gets rough. These are the stories that lovingly administer a swift kick in the spiritual behind or an arm around the shoulder as needed.
Black children are being demoralized, excessively punished, mislabeled and defeated by a school system that never wanted integration in the first place and that makes grudgingly little or no mention of African Americans, such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, George Washington Carver, Mary Bethune, Thurgood Marshall, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks and so many others who made sacrifices and contributions to an ungrateful nation. No parent of a Black child should be without these stories. These are the stories that take root in a child’s psyche and keep the wind in their sails through life’s storms. Parents should be exposing their children to these poems from day one. And it should be the goal of every teacher and of every librarian to constantly recite and discuss these poems and stories as a counterpoint to the negative images that are constantly being inflicted upon Black children.
The true beauty of Dunbar’s flow cannot be captured by the flat one-dimensional written page. With the emergence of new and exciting audio and visual technologies, children and adults of all ages and backgrounds can now enjoy the subtleties and nuances of Dunbar’s poetry in a way not previously possible. African Americans of all ages, backgrounds and educational levels can now discover why Dunbar is held in such high esteem that his poems were read aloud every Sunday from the pulpits of Black churches immediately after the sermon. We have lost the gift of Dunbar’s messages. And our children were set adrift and left to their own devices, only to be seduced, trapped and destroyed. It is time to rediscover the wonder of Dunbar, and, through Dunbar, to reclaim our children.
The Paul Laurence Dunbar Video DVD Collection is distributed by Goldhil Entertainment Company. For more information, please go to www.goldhil.com or click this Amazon.Com link. _____________________________________________________________________________________
