Alice Dunbar-Nelson (July 19, 1875 — September 18, 1935) is the author of Violets and Other Tales (1895) and The Goodness of St. Rocque (1899). She edited Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence (1914) and The Dunbar Speaker and Entertainer (1920). Dunbar-Nelson was a regular columnist for the Pittsburgh Courier and the Washington Eagle and co-editor of the A.M.E. Review. She also served as a Mid-Atlantic Field Organizer for women’s suffrage, a representative for the Woman’s Committee on the Council of Defense, and was a popular speaker to a wide range of groups. She helped to establish the Industrial School for Colored Girls in Marshalltown, DE.
Dunbar-Nelson married Paul Laurence Dunbar in 1898 and moved to DC. The marriage was not a happy one; Dunbar was physically abusive and the pair separated in 1902, and Dunbar died of tuberculosis and alcoholism in 1906 at age 33. Dunbar-Nelson subsequently moved to Maryland and Delaware. She married two more times, but always retained her eminent first husband’s last name. Her third marriage, to Robert J. Nelson, a journalist, was her happiest. Her diary, Give Us Each Day: The Diary of Alice Dunbar-Nelson, edited by Gloria T. Hull, was published posthumously in 1984.
