On December 13, 1890, the first issue of Dayton Tattler was published. A weekly newspaper written for an African American readership, the Tattler was edited by Paul Laurence Dunbar, who was eighteen years old and still in high school.
"Dayton Tattler" is the name of a newspaper published in this city for the benefit of the colored, and edited by Mr. Paul L. Dunbar. The first number is a bright and newsy feature.
"City Items." The Dayton Evening Herald (Dayton, Ohio). December 17, 1890. Page 7.
True to its name, the Tattler was full of witty gossip about local residents, as well as society announcements, editorials, church news, and many advertisements. Below is a sampling of the contents of the four-page publication.
Dayton Tattler
Paul L. Dunbar, Editor
Subscribe for the Tattler. One year for $1.50. Gives all the news among the colored people.
Dayton with her sixty thousand inhabitants, among which are numbered five thousand colored people, has for a long time demanded a paper representative of the energy and enterprise of our citizens. It is this long-felt want that the Tattler now aspires to fill. Her mission shall be to encourage and assist the enterprises of the city, to give our young people a field in which to exercise their literary talents, to champion the cause of right, and to espouse the principles of honest republicanism. We must ask the cooperation of a generous public in our attempt to do this. Everyone can give us some aid: first by subscribing to the paper; next by advertising; and thirdly by contributing. With these few introductory words, the Dayton Tattler makes its initial bow to the public, demanding the recognition which is its right.
The Tattler will prove an inveterate gossip and an acceptable fireside companion. In its columns will be found "crumbs for all chickens"; plenty of news, jokes, stories and even poems for those poetically inclined. We should have by the second week, two hundred subscriptions from young men alone. Help support a colored journal. And let it not be said a year, nay five years hence that the Tattler was one of those institutions which were but are not.
Has anybody seen: A moustache going down the street with Harry Lewis attached.
Miss Abbie Weir, of Springfield, proposes making her home in Dayton. Mr. Hawkins smiles audibly.
You need candy; therefore go to E. T. Sherman's, 22 Fourth Street and buy good wholesome candy. The colored people would do well to patronize him.
The Philodramian Society are preparing to entertain their friends Christmas, with the drama entitled, "The Gambler's Wife." They want it understood that they are not dead, but sleeping.
Excerpts from Dayton Tattler, December 13, 1890. Paul Laurence Dunbar Papers, Ohio History Connection (Microfilm edition, Roll 3).
The play The Gambler's Wife was written by Paul, and part of the script was in the first issue of the Tattler and continued in the next issue a week later. It also contained Paul's German dialect poem "Lager Beer," attributed to Pffenberger Deutzelhelm, and his short story "His Bride of the Tomb," attributed to Philip Louis Denterly.
Dayton Tattler was produced by Paul's friend and schoolmate Orville Wright; before they invented the airplane, the Wright brothers operated a printing shop in Dayton. Additional issues of the Tattler were published on December 20 and 27, 1890, but the newspaper was short-lived. Many years later, Wright recalled the brief life of the paper.
Paul Laurence Dunbar and I were close friends in our school days and in the years immediately following. When he was eighteen and I nineteen, we published a five-column weekly paper for people of his race; i.e., we published it as long as our financial resources permitted of it, which was not for long!
Orville Wright to Edward Johnson, January 2, 1934. Published in The Papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright, edited by Marvin W. McFarland. McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc. (New York, New York). 1953. Volume 2, Page 1162.