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19 Edward Sterling Wright and the Poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar Public speaking was a respected and popular profession in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, a time when bettering oneself through education was just beginning to become a widespread pursuit. Private lectures were patronized both by the snobbish elite who wanted to show off their education and by lower classes who wanted to get some. Celebrity was not essential for success as a speaker. Any good orator with a popular subject could fill a hall. Most “platform speakers” were white, but African Americans understood better than most the value of education (which they had been long denied), and some of their own entered the field. One of these was New York’s Edward Sterling Wright, who left us an unusual legacy in the form of readings of the poetry of the famous black poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, recorded on Edison cylinders in 1913. These are among the earliest spoken-word recordings dealing with serious literature. Wright’s early life was summarized in Edison publicity. Edward Sterling Wright, the noted Negro reader and impersonator, was born in New York in 1876. He sold papers to help his mother along while attending school, and was inspired to strive to attain a higher sphere in life when he was refused employment in a factory on the ground of color. This refusal landed him in the Emerson College of Oratory, Boston. Dr. Charles Wesley Emerson became interested in his new pupil. He took Mr. Wright to live with him in his home at Millis, Mass., and at Rochester, Vt. This close association and personal influence exerted on the student by this most skillful master of elocution, together with his close application to the requirements of his profession, has made Mr. Wright one of the most versatile, artistic and thoroughly competent entertainers before the public.1 According to his death certificate, Wright was born in New York in 1878, and was a lifelong resident of the city. His parents were Henry and Sarah Jacobson Wright.2 No student records have been located at Emerson College for Wright.3 Even if he was not regularly enrolled, it is certainly plausible that he attended Emerson around the turn of the century and received personal instruction from its white founder. The college was opened by Dr. Emerson in 1880 with the goal of “qualifying students to become professors and teachers of elocution and oratory in the colleges and high schools of the land. . . . The college is also designed as a means of liberal culture; its aim is not merely to make readers, but thinkers as well.”4 Dr. Emerson was evidently liberal on matters of race. Booker T. Washington was invited to speak at the institution in 1900, and black students are known to have been in the student body at that time. Dr. Emerson remained actively involved in the affairs of the college until1903. By the 1910s Wright’s profession was listed in the New York City Directory as “lecturer ,” and he evidently supplemented his income by acting in area productions.5 04.235-334_Broo 12/17/03, 1:46 PM 260 261 A 1911 item in the New York Age reported that “Earle Wright [sic], the well known dramatic reader and vocalist, has signed a contract to play in the spectacular production Marching through Georgia at the Hippodrome, New York, beginning March 6, for two months.”6 This is more than likely our subject. Paul Laurence Dunbar On the lecture platform Wright was known for his interpretations of the poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872–1906). Dunbar, who had died at a young age just a few years earlier, was a cultural hero to blacks and was popular among whites as well. The son of former slaves, he was born in Ohio and raised by his widowed mother, who told him stories of happier times “befo’ de wah.” Because she omitted the more brutal aspects of life under slavery, Dunbar developed a romanticized notion of the era which he incorporated into his early poems and stories. For this he has been much condemned by latter-day critics and historians, although it certainly was a popular notion at the time. Dunbarwasanexcellentstudentandby1889,twoyearsbeforehegraduatedfrom high school, he had already published poems in the local newspaper. Lacking the funds for a college education he had to settle for menial jobs in Dayton, including work as an elevator operator. He continued to write, and his poetry attracted...

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