On December 21, 1904, students at Dunbar Public School in Callao, Missouri, wrote a Christmas greeting to Paul Laurence Dunbar in Dayton. Paul was 32 years old and in poor health, and he had a little more than a year to live.
For the sweet joy our Friday evening readings of your poems and stories has given us -- Dunbar Public School sends you this little token of love and appreciation. Wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, we are forever your ardent admirers.
P.S. The blots and mistakes are smiles and well wishes. Merry Christmas! "The word is writ that he who runs may read."
Charles B. Johnson et. al. to Paul Laurence Dunbar, December 21, 1904. Paul Laurence Dunbar Papers, Ohio History Connection (Microfilm edition, Roll 1).
The 1904 letter to Paul Laurence Dunbar from school children in Callao, Missouri, is on display at the Dunbar House.
The letter is signed by twenty students and their teacher, Charles Bertram Johnson. The quotation is the first line from Paul's poem "Booker T. Washington." Johnson was a poet himself and published a book called Songs of My People in 1918. In that volume is a poem called "The Mantle of Dunbar" in which Johnson praises Paul's poetic gift and laments his early death. In the same book is a dialect poem about the school children of Callao.
Chillen comin' down de street,
When de hours in school is done,
Make de welken shout an' ring
With dey innercence an' fun.
Gee! my heart yearns, 'cause I know,
When de blue bird 'mence to sing,
Dat de kids are playin' keeps,
And in Callao it's spring.
Excerpt from "Spring in Callao" by Charles Bertram Johnson. Published in Songs of My People. The Cornhill Company (Boston, Massachusetts). 1918.
Today there is no longer a Dunbar School in Callao, but there are schools named after Paul throughout the country, including the Dunbar Early College High School in Dayton. On June 27, 2021, the principal and other representatives raised a school flag at Paul's gravesite to commemorate the 149th anniversary of his birth. Woodland Cemetery invites other Dunbar schools to send their flags to be flown at Paul's grave.
