"Colored Soldiers" by Paul Laurence Dunbar

"Colored Soldiers" by Paul Laurence Dunbar

Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906) was an African American poet, novelist, and playwright of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Paul Laurence Dunbar’s father, Joshua Dunbar, had escaped from a plantation in Kentucky via the Underground Railroad and joined the 55th Massachusetts Regiment of the Union army, serving in the Civil War. Dunbar’s pride in his father’s achievements inspired poems like “Our Martyred Soldiers”, “Whistlin’ Sam”, “W’en Dey ‘Listed Colored Soldiers” and “The Colored Soldiers”. “The Colored Soldiers” praises the brave black men who, like Dunbar’s father, had served in the union army during the Civil War.

Mitch Capel, Gran' Daddy Junebug
http://www.gjbug.com/The_Colored_Soldiers.php

The Collected Poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar, edited by Joanne M. Braxton (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1993).

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