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“I Prefer to Think That History Made Her:” Exploring the Relationship Between Alice Dunbar-Nelson and Edwina Kruse Through This Lofty Oak

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Navigating Women’s Friendships in American Literature and Culture

Part of the book series: American Literature Readings in the 21st Century ((ALTC))

Abstract

The life and work of Alice Dunbar-Nelson tend to be overshadowed by that of her first husband, poet and writer Paul Laurence Dunbar. However, Dunbar-Nelson’s activism, writing, and teaching are crucial to understanding her identity as a Black woman writer during the early twentieth century. Dunbar-Nelson’s multiple roles and identities become significant when investigating her mission to educate Black youth in Wilmington, Delaware, where she collaborated with another Black woman named Edwina Kruse to maintain and administer Howard High School, the only high school for Black children in 1867. This chapter explores diary entries and correspondence between the two women while interpreting Dunbar-Nelson’s unpublished fictional manuscript entitled This Lofty Oak. The unpublished manuscript details the life and legacy of Edwina Kruse through the characterization of Fredericka. While Dunbar-Nelson envisioned This Lofty Oak to be “the Great American novel,” the manuscript never saw publication. This chapter asks what it means for Black women to prioritize one another not only in educational endeavors but in literary texts. Reading the manuscript alongside the correspondence becomes complicated as the documents reorient their romantic relationship and reveal how Black women’s intellectual practices sustain other Black women’s life and legacy through literature.

MSS 0113, Alice Dunbar-Nelson papers, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware, Box 15, F.248. This exact quote comes from the forward of This Lofty Oak.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    MSS 0113, Alice Dunbar-Nelson papers, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware, Box 15, F.248.

  2. 2.

    The term, “the Great American Novel”, refers to the American literary canon and novels that tend to “perfectly” depict American culture and history.

  3. 3.

    Dunbar-Nelson, Alice Moore, and Gloria T. Hull. The Works of Alice Dunbar-Nelson. Oxford University Press, 1988.

  4. 4.

    See also “‘I Am An American!’ The Authorship and Activism of Alice Dunbar-Nelson,” a digital exhibition co-curated by Jesse Erickson and me for the Rosenbach Museum.

  5. 5.

    Gibson, Judith Y. “Mighty Oaks: Five Black Educators.” University of Delaware, 4 Aug. 1997.

  6. 6.

    Dunbar-Nelson, Alice Moore, and Akasha Gloria. Hull. 1986. Give Us Each Day: The Diary of Alice Dunbar-Nelson. Norton, pp. 14.

  7. 7.

    Alexander, Eleanor. Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow: The Tragic Courtship and Marriage of Paul Laurence Dunbar and Alice Ruth Moore: A History of Love and Violence among the African American Elite, pp.3.

  8. 8.

    On February 1, 1902, Paul Laurence Dunbar attempted to murder Dunbar-Nelson after coming home inebriated. This event was witnessed by New York Age editor T. Thomas Fortune who later wrote about the event to Booker T. Washington. Eleanor Alexander goes into more detail about this event in the Introduction of Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow.

  9. 9.

    While teaching at the University of Delaware’s Department of English in the 1980s, Akasha Gloria T. Hull developed a personal relationship with Dunbar-Nelson’s niece, Pauline A. Young, giving her access to Dunbar-Nelson’s diary and other materials. Because of their bond, Young gave permission to publish the diary in 1984, Give Us Each Day: The Diary of Alice Dunbar-Nelson. The diary covers Dunbar-Nelson’s life starting in 1921 and resuming 1926–1931. Hull goes into more depth about Dunbar-Nelson’s life, diary, and relationship with women in her 1987 book Color, Sex, and Poetry: Three Women Writers in the Harlem Renaissance, which was a turning point in bringing long overdue attention to her work.

  10. 10.

    Hull, Akasha Gloria. 1987. Color, Sex, & Power: Three Women Writers of the Harlem Renaissance. Indiana University Press, pp. 60.

  11. 11.

    Dunbar-Nelson, Alice Moore, and Hull, Akasha Gloria. 1986. Give Us Each Day: The Diary of Alice Dunbar-Nelson, pp. 15.

  12. 12.

    See also Treva B. Lindsey’s Colored No More” Reinventing Black Womanhood in Washington, D.C. (University of Illinois Press, 2017).

  13. 13.

    Harley, Sharon. “Beyond the Classroom: Organizational Lives of Black Female Educators in the District of Columbia, 1890–1930.” Journal of Negro Education 51 (3), 1982, pp.254.

  14. 14.

    Harley, Sharon. 1982, 256.

  15. 15.

    See also Angela Davis’s chapter “Black Women and the Club Movement” in her 1981 book Women, Race & Class.

  16. 16.

    Marks, Carole C. 1996. A History of African Americans of Delaware and Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Delaware Heritage Commission. Principal Ray Wooten succeeded Edwina Kruse after her retirement in 1920.

  17. 17.

    Gibson, Judith Y. “Mighty Oaks: Five Black Educators.” University of Delaware, 4 Aug. 1997.

    Current scholarship discussing the Delaware Association for the Moral Improvement and Education of Colored People now refer to the organization as the Delaware Association. The Delaware Association was founded by white residents of Wilmington, DE in 1866 to develop schools for Black children. The organization founded 36 schools between the years of 1867 and 1875 until the state became responsible for Black schools. The organization decreased its involvement and ceased to exist by 1886.

  18. 18.

    Marks, Carole C. A History of African Americans of Delaware and Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Delaware Heritage Commission, 1996.

  19. 19.

    Gibson, Judith Y. “Mighty Oaks: Five Black Educators.” University of Delaware, 4 Aug. 1997.

    The Sarah Ann White Home later combined with the Layton Home for Colored People in 1915.

    The Delaware State Federation of Negro Women’s Clubs eventually founded the Industrial School for Girls in 1920 to assist women and girls who had been in trouble with the law learn domestic skills and occupations. After leaving Howard High, Alice Dunbar-Nelson went to head the school where it was renamed the Kruse Industrial School to honor Edwina Kruse.

  20. 20.

    Marks, Carole C. A History of African Americans of Delaware and Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Delaware Heritage Commission, 1996.

  21. 21.

    Higginbotham, Evelyn Brooks Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880–1920. Harvard University Press, 1993, 187.

  22. 22.

    Thanks to the preservation practices of Dunbar-Nelson’s niece, Pauline Young, and the scholarship of Akasha Gloria T. Hull, the University of Delaware acquired the papers in 1984.

  23. 23.

    MSS 0113, Alice Dunbar-Nelson papers, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware, Box 8, F. 190.

  24. 24.

    MSS 0113, Alice Dunbar-Nelson papers, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware, Box 15, F.191.

  25. 25.

    MSS 0113, Alice Dunbar-Nelson papers, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware, Box 15, F.191.

  26. 26.

    MSS 0113, Alice Dunbar-Nelson papers, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware, Box 8, F. 190.

  27. 27.

    MSS 0113, Alice Dunbar-Nelson papers, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware, Box 8, F. 190.

  28. 28.

    MSS 0113, Alice Dunbar-Nelson papers, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware, Box 8, F. 190.

  29. 29.

    MSS 0113, Alice Dunbar-Nelson papers, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware, Box 8, F. 190.

  30. 30.

    MSS 0113, Alice Dunbar-Nelson papers, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware, Box 8, F. 190.

  31. 31.

    Hansen, Karen V. 1995. “‘No Kisses is Like Youres’: An Erotic Friendship between Two African-American Women during the Mid-Nineteenth Century.” Gender & History 7, pp. 153.

  32. 32.

    Primus, Rebecca, Addie Brown, and Farah Jasmine Griffin. 1999. Beloved Sisters and Loving Friends: Letters from Rebecca Primus of Royal Oak, Maryland and Addie Brown of Hartford, Connecticut, 1854–1868. 1st ed. New York: Knopf, pp. 4.

  33. 33.

    Primus, Rebecca, Addie Brown, and Farah Jasmine Griffin. 1999. Beloved Sisters and Loving Friends: Letters from Rebecca Primus of Royal Oak, Maryland and Addie Brown of Hartford, Connecticut, 1854–1868. 1st ed. New York: Knopf, pp. 4.

  34. 34.

    Primus, Rebecca, Addie Brown, and Farah Jasmine Griffin. 1999. Beloved Sisters and Loving Friends: Letters from Rebecca Primus of Royal Oak, Maryland and Addie Brown of Hartford, Connecticut, 1854–1868. 1st ed. New York: Knopf, pp. 5.

  35. 35.

    Hansen, Karen V. 1995. “‘No Kisses is Like Youres’: An Erotic Friendship between Two African-American Women during the Mid-Nineteenth Century.” Gender & History 7, pp. 153.

  36. 36.

    Hansen, Karen V. 1995. “‘No Kisses is Like Youres’: An Erotic Friendship between Two African-American Women during the Mid-Nineteenth Century.” Gender & History 7, pp. 153.

  37. 37.

    Hansen, Karen V. 1995. “‘No Kisses is Like Youres’: An Erotic Friendship between Two African-American Women during the Mid-Nineteenth Century.” Gender & History 7, pp. 154.

  38. 38.

    Dunbar-Nelson, Alice Moore, and Hull, Akasha Gloria. 1986. Give Us Each Day: The Diary of Alice Dunbar-Nelson, pp. 374.

  39. 39.

    Farr, Rachel H et al. “Female Same-Sex Sexuality From a Dynamical Systems Perspective: Sexual Desire, Motivation, and Behavior.” Archives of Sexual Behavior vol. 43, 8 (2014): 1477.

  40. 40.

    I adopt this term and concept of Black women’s uses of the erotic from Audre Lorde’s 1978 essay “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power.”

  41. 41.

    Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll. “The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations between Women in Nineteenth-Century America.” Signs, vol. 1, no. 1, 1975, pp. 2.

  42. 42.

    Although the manuscript remains unpublished, the entire novel, along with edits and drafts, is available at the University of Delaware’s Special Collections Library.

  43. 43.

    Other works by Dunbar-Nelson that explore education, racial equality, and women’s rights include her essays “Negro Women in War Work” (1919), “Politics in Delaware” (1924) and “From a Woman’s Point of View” (1926).

  44. 44.

    Dunbar-Nelson’s 1895 collection of short stories and poems, Violets and Other Tales, follows this same framework of metaphorical devices to describe herself and her writing. In the preface, Dunbar-Nelson compares public opinions of her work to an object that will sink or swim depending on how its perceived.

  45. 45.

    MSS 0113, Alice Dunbar-Nelson papers, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware, Box 15, F.248.

  46. 46.

    MSS 0113, Alice Dunbar-Nelson papers, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware, Box 15, F.248.

  47. 47.

    MSS 0113, Alice Dunbar-Nelson papers, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware, Box 14, F, 245. This specific folder shows Dunbar-Nelson’s early draft of the manuscript where she signs that the poem was written by a persona named Kor-Daren. It is unclear who this figure is and their relation to Dunbar-Nelson. Dunbar-Nelson modifies parts of the poem to read “this lofty oak” instead of “this great oak,” which may be the original title of the poem. The poet may be the “forgotten poet of the Old Country” that she refers to in the manuscript’s forward.

  48. 48.

    MSS 0113, Alice Dunbar-Nelson papers, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware, Box 15, F.248.

  49. 49.

    MSS 0113, Alice Dunbar-Nelson papers, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware, Box 15, F.248.

  50. 50.

    MSS 0113, Alice Dunbar-Nelson papers, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware, Box 15, F.248.

  51. 51.

    MSS 0113, Alice Dunbar-Nelson papers, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware, Box 15, F.248.

  52. 52.

    MSS 0113, Alice Dunbar-Nelson papers, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware, Box 15, F.248.

  53. 53.

    MSS 0113, Alice Dunbar-Nelson papers, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware, Box 15, F.248.

  54. 54.

    MSS 0113, Alice Dunbar-Nelson papers, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware, Box 15, F.248.

  55. 55.

    MSS 0113, Alice Dunbar-Nelson papers, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware, Box 15, F.248.

  56. 56.

    MSS 0113, Alice Dunbar-Nelson papers, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware, Box 15, F.248.

  57. 57.

    MSS 0113, Alice Dunbar-Nelson papers, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware, Box 15, F.248.

  58. 58.

    MSS 0113, Alice Dunbar-Nelson papers, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware, Box 15, F.248.

  59. 59.

    MSS 0113, Alice Dunbar-Nelson papers, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware, Box 15, F.248.

  60. 60.

    MSS 0113, Alice Dunbar-Nelson papers, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware, Box 15, F.248.

  61. 61.

    MSS 0113, Alice Dunbar-Nelson papers, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware, Box 15, F.248.

  62. 62.

    MSS 0113, Alice Dunbar-Nelson papers, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware, Box 15, F.248.

  63. 63.

    MSS 0113, Alice Dunbar-Nelson papers, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware, Box 15, F.248.

  64. 64.

    MSS 0113, Alice Dunbar-Nelson papers, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware, Box 15, F.248.

  65. 65.

    MSS 0113, Alice Dunbar-Nelson papers, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware, Box 15, F.248.

  66. 66.

    MSS 0113, Alice Dunbar-Nelson papers, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware, Box 15, F.248.

  67. 67.

    MSS 0113, Alice Dunbar-Nelson papers, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware, Box 15, F.248.

  68. 68.

    This Lofty Oak remaining a manuscript and not a novel emphasizes problems surrounding Black women’s literary production, with most Black women writers having a more difficult time convincing publishing companies to publish their work in comparison to their Black male counterparts.

  69. 69.

    Hill Collins, Patricia. 2000. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. Rev. 10th anniversary. Perspectives on Gender. New York: Routledge, pp. 4.

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  1. University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA

    Monet Lewis-Timmons

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Correspondence to Monet Lewis-Timmons .

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  1. Gender and Women’s Studies, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, KY, USA

    Kristi Branham

  2. Department of English, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, KY, USA

    Kelly L. Reames

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Lewis-Timmons, M. (2023). “I Prefer to Think That History Made Her:” Exploring the Relationship Between Alice Dunbar-Nelson and Edwina Kruse Through This Lofty Oak. In: Branham, K., Reames, K.L. (eds) Navigating Women’s Friendships in American Literature and Culture. American Literature Readings in the 21st Century. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08003-6_14

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