Historical Soceity of Delaware - Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Suffragist

In the summer and fall of 1915, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, a teacher at Wilmington Howard High School, acted on her long-held support of woman's suffrage. Under the auspices of the Pennsylvania State Federation for Equal Franchise, she toured that state speaking to churches, clubs, and suffrage meetings. She spoke to both blacks and whites, but her main goal was to win the support of African-American women.

A native of New Orleans, Alice Dunbar-Nelson came East for graduate study in 1896. She married poet Paul Laurence Dunbar in 1898. After separating from him in 1902, she moved to Wilmington, where she lived until 1930. She taught English and chaired the English Department at Howard High School until 1920. With Robert J. Nelson, who she married in 1916, she published the Wilmington Advocate from 1920 to 1922. A part of the Harlmen Renaissance of the 1920s, Dunbar-Nelson wrote fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. She spent her last years in Philadelphia and died there in 1935.