Frederick Douglass

Paul Laurence Dunbar wrote the poem “Frederick Douglass” as an elegy after the death of the American abolitionist and statesman Frederick Douglass in 1895. Dunbar was born in 1872 to parents who had been enslaved in Kentucky; in his lifetime, he remained involved in the early civil rights movement and met Douglass at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. The poem was published as part of a collection of poems entitled Majors and Minors (1896) in which Dunbar engages with the issues and challenges facing the African American community in the United States following their liberation from enslavement and the aftermath of the American Civil War. The poem praises Douglass as a talented and fierce fighter for the community, as Dunbar mourns the loss of an extraordinary man who elevated the civil rights cause while showing that a Black man born into slavery could have success and acceptance at the highest levels of American society and government.

Poet Biography

Paul Laurence Dunbar was born on June 27, 1872 in Dayton, Ohio. His parents were freed slaves from Kentucky, and Dunbar’s poetry was often informed by their experiences on plantations before the American Civil War. Throughout his life, Dunbar was actively involved in the civil rights movement at the turn of the century, and sought to uplift African Americans.