HANDS OF NEGRO TEACHERS?

BY MRS. PAUL L. DUNBAR.

[Illustration: Mrs. Paul L. Dunbar]

MRS. PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR.

Mrs. Paul Laurence Dunbar (Alice Ruth Moore) was born in New
Orleans, La., July 19, 1875. Attended public schools there
and Straight University, and was graduated from the latter
institution in 1892. Taught in the public schools of New
Orleans until 1896, when she went to Boston and New York for
study, taking a course in Manual Training at the Teachers'
College. Was appointed a teacher in the public schools of
Brooklyn, N. Y., in 1897, and taught there until her
marriage to Mr. Paul Laurence Dunbar, in March, 1898.

In 1895, Mrs. Dunbar's first book, "Violets and Other
Tales," was published by the Monthly Review Publishing
Company, Boston. The next book, "The Goodness of St.
Rocque," published by Dodd, Mead & Co., New York, in 1899,
was favorably received by some of the best critics. Mrs.
Dunbar has written a number of short stories for some of the
leading magazines and newspapers in the country, among them
McClures, the Smart Set, Ladies' Home Journal, the Southern
Workman, Leslie's Weekly, the New York Sun, Boston
Transcript, and for over a year did regular work on the
Chicago News.

While teaching in Brooklyn, Mrs. Dunbar was actively
interested in mission work on the East Side of New York,
conducting classes in manual training and kindergarten after
the regular hours of public school work was over. Since her
marriage, Mrs. Dunbar has resided in Washington, and has
done some of her best work in short story writing, as well
as acting as secretary and general helpmeet for her husband.

It seems a rather incongruous fact that so many of our Negro colleges
in the South, whose purpose is avowedly the insistence of higher
education of Negro youth, should deny that youth not only the
privilege of teaching in the very institutions which have taught him,
but also deny him the privilege of looking up to and reverencing his
own people. For so long have the whites been held up to the young
people as the only ones whom it is worth while taking as models; for
so long have the ignorant of the race been taught that their best
efforts after all, are hardly worth while, that wherever possible, it
behooves us to place over the masses those of their own race