Give Us Each Day by Alice Dunbar-Nelson

First published: 1984

Type of work: Diary

Time of work: 1921-1931

Locale: Wilmington, Delaware; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Washington, D.C.

Principal Personages:

• Alice Dunbar-Nelson, a teacher and writer, widow of Paul Laurence Dunbar
• Patricia Moore, her mother, a dictator in Alice’s woman-centered household
• Mary “Leila” Ruth Young, Alice’s older sister, a teacher and the principal breadwinner in the Dunbar-Nelson/Young family after Alice was terminated from her teaching job at Howard High School
• Pauline A. Young, Alice’s niece and eventual custodian of her diary
• Henry Arthur Callis, the man whom Dunbar-Nelson secretly married in 1910
• Robert J. Nelson (Bobbo), a journalist, Alice’s third spouse
• Helene London Ricks, a Chicago artist and friend of Alice
• Fay Jackson Robinson, a Los Angeles newspaperwoman and friend of Alice

Form and Content

Written between 1921 and 1931, the diary of Alice Dunbar-Nelson is one of the first journals by an African American woman to be published in the United States. The core of Dunbar-Nelson’s diary discloses what it meant to be an educated black woman in the middle class in early twentieth century America. The journal recounts the experiences of one privileged African American woman, whose caste and Caucasian features allowed her to enjoy rights and advantages denied to most black people.

Dunbar-Nelson maintained her diary during a period of personal turbulence. When she initiated her writing on July 29, 1921, Dunbar-Nelson was attempting to adjust to the previous year’s tragedies. These included the termination of her teaching position and chairmanship of the English department of Howard High school, chronic money problems, and the death of her favorite niece. The diary ends on December 31, 1931. After that time, Dunbar-Nelson enjoyed a prosperous lifestyle made possible by her husband’s appointment to the Pennsylvania Athletic Commission. Dunbar-Nelson’s journalizing throughout this traumatic period of her life seems to support the maxim that diaries are frequently maintained during times of calamity.

Many of the entries are mechanical or journalistic, while others reflect introspective thinking. There are only two recorded instances of her rereading what she had written earlier, the anniversary of her 1930 trip to California and her birthday in 1931. Dunbar-Nelson wrote in her diary when the spirit moved her. During the first years of the journal, she vowed to write daily, but she was never able to keep her resolves. Some lapses were five to ten days long; others lasted three or four weeks. Once she failed to write for two months. She stopped writing in 1922 and did not begin again until 1926.

The kinds of entries varied from year to year, ranging from the leisurely sentenced ones of 1921, to the choppy ones of 1926-1927, to the intense and briefly reflective entries of 1930. She wrote in every one of her many moods, only confessing once, in 1931, that she deliberately refrained “when the misery and wretchedness and disappointment and worry were so close to me that to write it out was impossible, and not to write it out, foolish.”

When Dunbar-Nelson begins her chronicling, at the end of July, 1921, she writes about the battle to continue the Wilmington Advocate, a liberal African American newspaper that she and her husband, Robert Nelson, had been publishing for two years. This publication, financed by the Republican Party and subject to its whims as well as to the negative effects of prejudice and powerlessness, consumed much of Dunbar-Nelson’s attention for the year 1921. She wrote editorials and compiled news items for it, she conducted fund-raisers to support it, and she participated in the all-night sessions required to get the ill-fated newspaper on the street to sell by Friday afternoon. When the newspaper officially collapsed in 1922, Dunbar-Nelson suffered a loss of standing and political clout.

Another concern of Dunbar-Nelson in 1921 was her involvement with the Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs. An officer in the Delaware chapter, she also participated in other states’s chapter activities. Dunbar-Nelson also was interested in her lecture circuit. Her journal is filled with details of travel and information about the towns, churches, and schools in which she lectured. Perhaps Dunbar-Nelson’s greatest speaking engagement of the year was as a member of a delegation of prominent black citizens who presented President Warren Harding with racial concerns. With notables such as James Weldon Johnson and Mary Church Terrell, Dunbar-Nelson petitioned Harding to grant clemency for the sixty-one black soldiers serving lengthy prison terms for participation in the Houston “race riot” of August, 1917.

As Dunbar-Nelson examined 1921, she called it “one of the unhappiest years I ever spent.” By the conclusion of 1921, Dunbar-Nelson had introduced many of the concerns that pervade the journal in subsequent years: her financial crises, her club activities, her delight in good food, and her love of pinochle.

The next portion of Dunbar-Nelson’s diary begins with an entry dated November 8, 1926. No internal evidence exists within the writing to provide clues about the five-year lapse in her journal. During the years between 1922 and 1926, Dunbar-Nelson led a very active life. One of her most important projects involved her leadership of the Delaware Anti-Lynching Crusaders, a group that in conjunction with a national effort agitated for congressional passage of the 1922 Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill. This legislation aimed to curtail the widespread lynching that assailed African Americans. The defeat of this bill was instrumental in Dunbar-Nelson’s defection to the Democratic party.

In 1924, Dunbar-Nelson became an educator and a parole officer at the Industrial School for Colored Girls, where she remained until 1928. She taught mixed-grade classes, attended court parole sessions, and directed musicals and dramatic presentations. In 1924, she and Robert began a close association with the Black Elks. Alice wrote a column, “As in a Looking Glass,” for the Elk newspaper, the Washington Eagle, which her husband managed. Because Robert’s job anchored him in Washington, D.C., Dunbar-Nelson spent much of 1925 and 1926 in a futile effort to secure a teaching position in the District of Columbia.

In 1927, Dunbar-Nelson invested much effort scheming for the secretaryship of the Society of Friends’ American Inter-Racial Peace Committee, a subsidiary of the Friends’ Service Committee. She coveted this position because it could free her from teaching responsibilities. Perhaps the biggest secret of Dunbar-Nelson’s life is revealed in this year. On January 19, she cryptically alludes to her secret marriage to Henry Arthur Callis: “January 19, 1910-1927. This is the date, is it not. . . . Seventeen years we would have been together.” Stylistically, the 1926-1927 diary entries contrast markedly with those of 1921. Dunbar-Nelson seemingly had fewer satisfactory opportunities to write. She did not keep her journal current and lapsed in 1927 for periods ranging from a few days to two months.

At the beginning of 1928, Dunbar-Nelson was still teaching at the Industrial School for Girls. She quit when the American Inter-Racial Peace Committee (AIPC) offered her full-time employment. The Philadelphia location of her new job required her to commute daily from Wilmington. The racist attitudes and remarks of Wilbur K. Thomas, a white executive secretary of the American Friends Service Committee, made Dunbar-Nelson’s tenure at the workplace challenging and uncomfortable. While working for the AIPC, Dunbar-Nelson also wrote poems, articles, and newspaper columns. Her prescient comment that her diary is “going to be valuable one of these days” suggests Dunbar-Nelson’s source of motivation in maintaining her journal.

In 1928, Dunbar-Nelson had the job of her choice as well as speaking engagements. Still, she was not completely happy. In an entry dated Monday, December 17, she grieved her loss of “social touch” and the fact that she no longer was invited to parties.

By 1929, Dunbar-Nelson’s AIPC secretaryship had become very demanding, to the point of pressuring her to raise money for the group’s programs. She was still a member of the Industrial School Trustee Board and was participating in club activities, but she believed that she was losing friends and becoming an outsider. The entry from Saturday, February 16, reflected her concern. “Something wrong with me somewhere. Can’t keep friends I want and can’t get rid of friends I don’t want.”

The year 1930 was much happier. She described the year as “one glorious fling.” She began it by taking a ten-week tour, which the AIPC sponsored. California was the backdrop for one of the major narratives in the diary. Here she had a “romantic fling” with Fay Jackson Robinson, a younger newspaperwoman and socialite whom she met on the trip. Another woman, Helene Ricks London, a painter, also entered the relationship that Dunbar-Nelson and Fay shared. Biographer Gloria Hull explains that “Helene and Fay were involved with each other before Dunbar-Nelson entered the picture and that both of them were passionately interested in her. This intrigue accounts for many letters, sonnets, domestic scenes, arguments, heartaches, and tears” following Dunbar-Nelson’s return from her tour.

Professionally, Dunbar-Nelson was discouraged. Most of the writing that she submitted was rejected. Her niece Ethel died, and her mother’s health deteriorated. Dunbar-Nelson was beset with suicidal yearnings and on August 2 wrote “Life is a mess. I am profoundly in the D’s—discouraged, depressed, disheartened, disgusted. Why does one want to live?” As she assessed 1930, Dunbar-Nelson wrote that the only good thing about the year was that it “brought me California. I shall you bless you for that.”

Dunbar-Nelson characterized 1931 as “a year of marking time.” She waited for her Inter-Racial Peace Committee job to dissolve, and in April, it did. She and her family waited for her mother to die, a process that took a year. She waited for Robert to secure a political sinecure, which he did in 1932. The high points of the year included Alice bobbing her hair, changing her signature to Aliceruth, and visiting Helene London in Bermuda.

Critical Context

Dunbar-Nelson’s diary may be the most significant and enduring piece of writing that she produced. Its revelations about African American culture and about women’s existence are priceless. Her diary provides private glimpses of public figures and inside reports of major events. For example, a 1927 entry gives readers a view of Dunbar-Nelson and scholar W. E. B. Du Bois cooking breakfast. The diary also affords a view of numerous national African American conventions, such as the research conference held in Durham, North Carolina, in December, 1927 and the annual assembly of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The diary also shows that at one point, Dunbar-Nelson and Carter G. Woodson, founder of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, were collaborating on researching and writing a book.

Dunbar-Nelson’s journal is invaluable for its revelations about black culture. As Gloria Hull states, it should force a radical assessment of generalizations about black women writers during the early twentieth century.

Bibliography

Berry, Linda S. “Georgia Douglas Johnson and Alice Dunbar-Nelson.” In American Women Writers, edited by Barbara White. New York: Garland, 1977. A brief biographical essay on Alice Dunbar-Nelson.

Dunbar-Nelson, Alice Moore. Give Us Each Day: The Diary of Alice Dunbar-Nelson. Edited by Gloria T. Hull. New York: W. W. Norton, 1984. Hull, Dunbar-Nelson’s biographer, studied and researched the author’s diary with the assistance of Dunbar-Nelson’s niece, Pauline A. Young. Although a few researchers had cursorily glanced at it, it had never before Hull’s study been thoroughly read or studied. Remarks by Hull are very useful in providing an overview of the diary.

Hatch, James Vernon. Black Theater USA: Forty-five Plays by Black Americans, 1847-1974 New York: Free Press, 1974. Refers to an interview given by Dunbar-Nelson’s niece Pauline A. Young. Young states that her aunt “taught us English in the high school. She produced her play and we all took parts. The audience loved it. … but nobody would publish it.”

Hull, Gloria T. Color, Sex, and Poetry: Three Women Writers of the Harlem Renaissance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987. Provides an analysis of the life and works of Dunbar-Nelson.

Hull, Gloria T., Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith, eds. All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, but Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women’s Studies. Old Westbury, NY.: Feminist Press, 1982. This anthology contains Hull’s illuminating essay, “Researching Alice Dunbar-Nelson: A Personal and Literary Perspective,” which tells how the critic discovered and edited Dunbar-Nelson’s journal.