Post by Pastor ( Dr. )Michael Jobi-Fele Enitan JR (Jp)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO LATE GREAT, TALENTED, MR. PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR! Paul Laurence Dunbar was a poet, novelist, and short story writer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was born in Dayton, Ohio, to parents who had been enslaved in Kentucky before the American Civil War, Dunbar began writing stories and verse when he was a child. He published his 1st poems at the age of 16 in a Dayton newspaper, and served as president of his high school's literary society. Dunbar's vaudeville song "Who Dat Say Chicken in Dis Crowd?" influenced the development of "Who dat? Who dat? Who dat say gonna beat dem Saints?", the popular chant associated with the New Orleans Saints football team, according to Dunbar scholar Hollis Robbins. Dr. Maya Angelou titled her autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), from a line in Dunbar's poem "Sympathy", at the suggestion of jazz musician and activist Abbey Lincoln. She said that Dunbar's works had inspired her "writing ambition."