Black History: Writers of Color Posters & Prints, “D...-”

Writings of Frank Marshall Davis: A Voice of the Black Press (no commerically avaiable poster)

Frank Marshall Davis
b. 12-31-1905; Arkansas City, KS
d. 7-28-1987; Honolulu, HI

Frank Marshall Davis, a central figure in the black press, worked as a reporter and editor for the Atlanta World, the Associated Negro Press, the Chicago Star, and the Honolulu Record.

Martin Delany - The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States and Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party (no commerically available poster)

Martin Delany
b. 5-6-1812; Charles Town, WV
d. 1-24-1885; Xenia, OH (tuberculosis)

Martin Delany, born free, learned to read and write as a child, and continued his education, both formally and informally, his entire life. He was admitted to the Harvard Medical School, though he and two other black students were dismissed because of complaints from white students (1850).

Delany worked with Frederick Douglass on The North Star and was an early proponent of emigration to Africa as a new start for freed slaves.

Delaney was the first African American field officer in the United States Army during the Civil War, serving as a surgeon in the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry.

Frederick Douglass Writer's Who Changed the World Poster Series

Frederick Douglass
b. 2-14-c.1818; Maryland
d. 2-20-1895

Poster Text: “The more I read, the more I was lead to abhor and detest my enslavers. I could regard them in no other light than a band of successful robbers, who had left their homes, and gone to Africa, and stolen us from our homes, and in a strange land reduced us to slavery. I loathed them as being the meanest as well as the most wicked of men.”- Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born into slavery in rural Maryland – he never knew exactly when he was born. As a child, he wore nothing but a shirt, ate little but mush, and lived in fear of the brutal beatings that were common on the plantation. When he was 7 or 8 years old, he was sent to Baltimore to serve as a houseboy for the Auld family. Mrs. Sophia Auld taught “Freddy” the alphabet and some simple words before her husband ordered her to stop. But Freddy did not stop, and he learned how to read by tricking some white servants into helping him. By the time he was went back to work in the fields, he had made up his mind to be free. He held on to this feeling through several years of horrible treatment as a field slave. He finally escaped in 1838 and made his way north to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he took the name “Frederick Douglass.”

An anti-slavery group invited Douglass to talk to them. He soon became known as a powerful speaker and a leader of the abolitionist movement. His autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself, was published in 1845. The book was very popular because Douglass wrote about the evils of slavery in his own truthful words.

After Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass was published, Douglass was the best-known and most respected African American leader in the nation. He founded a magazine, published two more works of autobiography, and helped recruit African American troops during the Civil War. After the Civil War, Douglass served as Minister to Haiti and as the Marshal for the District of Columbia. He died in 1895.

• more Frederick Douglass posters
• more Writers Who Changed the World posters

Rita Dove
b. 8-28-1952; Akron, OH

Rita Dove was 1987 Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry and Poet Laureate of the United States.

• Rita Dove Books

W. E. B. DuBois Black History Biographical Timeline Poster

W. E. B. DuBois
b. 2-23-1868; Great Barrinton, MA
d. 8-27-1963

“The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.”
A noted scholar, writer, educator, and activist, W. E. B. Dubois devoted his life to studying and addressing the social and economic condition of black people. He was admired by his contemporaries for fighting injustice and defending freedom.

• more W. E. B. DuBois posters
• more Black History Biographical Timeline posters

Alexandre Dumas père
b. 7-24-1802; France
d. 12-5-1870

Alexander Dumas, père (which means father) is best known for his numerous historical novels of high adventure such as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers. Dumas had a collaborator, Auguste Maquet, whose contribution of plot outline and character drafts were not acknowledgd publicly but were paid for with generous fees. The elder Alexandre Dumas' reworking of E.T.A. Hoffmann's “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King” was used by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky as the basis for his ballet, “The Nutcracker”.

Dumas was the grandson of a French military officer and an Afro-Caribeean Creole, and the son of an improvished military officer who had gotten on the wrong side of Napolean.

• Alexandre Dumas, fils

Paul Laurence Dunbar
b. 6-27-1872; Dayton, OH
d. 2-9-1906

Paul Laurence Dunbar, the son of former slaves, was one of the most prominent figures in American literature at the turn of the twentieth century. Dunbar had published four novels, four collections of short stories, and fourteen books of poetry, as well as numerous songs, plays, and essays in newspapers and magazines around the world when he passed at the age of thirty-three in 1906. (based on book information from The Complete Stories of Paul Laurence Dunbar)

• more poetry posters
• “In Dahomey”