Alice Dunbar-Nelson's "I Sit and Sew"

The Daily Poem

Nelson is likely best known for her literary output as a poet. She regularly published in Opportunity and Crisis magazines between 1917 and 1928. Her poems also appeared in James Weldon Johnson’s seminal anthology, The Book of American Negro Poetry (Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1931). Nelson began to keep a personal diary in 1921. Her entries from 1926 to 1931 were later edited by scholar Gloria T. Hull for a volume entitled Give Us Each Day: The Diary of Alice Dunbar-Nelson (W. W. Norton, 1984).

Toward the end of her public career, Nelson focused on journalism and public speaking. She gave numerous speeches as the executive secretary of the American Friends Inter-Racial Peace Committee from 1928 to 1931. From 1926 to 1930, Nelson wrote newspaper columns and became an activist for women’s suffrage and civil rights. In 1922, she advocated for the passage of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, and helped establish the Industrial School for Colored Girls in Delaware. One of her speeches was published and included in Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence (The Bookery Publishing Company, 1914), and examples of her dialect poetry, dramatic prose, and oratory were collected The Dunbar Speaker and Entertainer (J. L. Nichols & Co., 1920). Both are anthologies that Nelson edited.

-bio via Academy of American Poets

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