The African American Museum, Dallas, will host a screening of Paul Laurence Dunbar: Beyond The Mask, a feature-length documentary on the life and legacy of the first African American poet/writer to gain international fame. Frederick Lewis – an acclaimed filmmaker, writer and director and professor of media arts at Ohio University – will be on hand to introduce the film and lead a post-screening discussion.

Born to former slaves in Dayton, Ohio, Dunbar (1872-1906) is best remembered for his poem “We Wear The Mask” and for lines from “Sympathy” that became the title of Maya Angelou’s famous autobiography, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings. A clip of Angelou reciting Dunbar’s poem is featured in the film.

Dunbar’s story is also the story of the African American experience around the turn of the century. The man abolitionist Frederick Douglass called “the most promising young colored man in America” wrote widely published essays critical of Jim Crow laws, lynching, and what was commonly called “The Negro Problem.”