Documentary on Paul Laurence Dunbar coming Feb. 27

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. -- A documentary of the life of renowned 19th century African-American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar will be screened at Cal State San Bernardino on Thursday, Feb. 27, from 10-11:30 a.m., in the Santos Manuel Student Union Theater.

Presented and produced by Joseph W. Slade, professor of media studies and co-director of the Central Region Humanities Center of Ohio University (Athens), “Dunbar Unmasked: The Life and Legacy of Paul Laurence Dunbar” tells the story of the poet’s brief life.

Born to former slaves in 1872 in Dayton, Ohio, Dunbar became the first African-American national poet. He is best known for his verse and short stories, many of which are written in black dialect. The film shows Dunbar’s continuing influence on artists, writers, musicians, academics and the African-American communities today.

Dunbar’s first book of poems, “Oak and Ivy,” was published in 1892. His second book, “Majors and Minors,” was published in 1895. A New York publishing firm later combined Dunbar’s first two books and published them in 1896 as “Lyrics of a Lowly Life.”

That book included an introduction by William Dean Howells, a novelist and respected literary critic who edited for Harper’s Weekly, in which he praised Dunbar as: “… the only man of pure African blood and of African civilization to feel the Negro life aesthetically and express it lyrically.”

“We are very excited to have ‘Dunbar Unmasked’ to debut at CSUSB during Black History Month,” said Ece Algan, CSUSB professor of communication studies. “Paul Laurence Dunbar continues to be influential today through the writings of famous African-American writers like Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison, both of whom credit Dunbar as an inspiration.

“Dunbar’s writings were accounts of black life before and after slavery and chronicled oppression, abuse and injustice,” she said. “He was the first African-American to gain national prominence as a poet, and one of the first black writers to make a living from his writing. It’s important to teach his writings and keep his legacy alive.”

Dunbar was one of the first “cross-over” artists, enthralling audiences of all races in the United States and England with his poetry readings.

Today’s rap and poetry “slams” descend directly from Dunbar’s experiments in dialect. Artists and academics interviewed for the documentary discuss not just poems such as “We Wear the Mask,” and “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” which have earned Dunbar a permanent place in American literature, but also the journalism, short stories, novels, plays and musical lyrics that made up his brief and brilliant career. He died of tuberculosis at 33 in 1906.

The poet’s journalism attacked racism, while his poetry and fiction inspired enormous pride in African-Americans who flocked to churches and lecture halls to hear him recite and to perform a blackness they admired. Negotiating a culture shaped by Jim Crow laws from the late 1800s consumed much of his energy.

Professor Slade is a cultural historian of technology with expertise in exploring the ways that messages move through back channels of communication, such as gossip, espionage and outlaw forms of discourse.

His books include “Thomas Pynchon” (1974), “Pornography in America: A Reference Handbook” (2000), and “Beyond the Two Cultures: Essays on Science, Technology and Literature,” (1990).

Co-sponsored by CSUSB’s department of communication studies, the Society for Student Filmmakers and the University Diversity Committee, the presentation is free and open to the public. Parking on campus is $5 per vehicle.

For more information about the film screening, contact professor Ece Algan at (909) 537-7469 or e-mail ealgan@csusb.edu.

For more information about Cal State San Bernardino, contact the university’s Office of Public Affairs at (909) 537-5007 and visit news.csusb.edu.