This week’s post comes from teaching-writer Sagirah Shahid. In his 1899 poem “Sympathy,” Paul Laurence Dunbar captured some of the emotional weightiness of what it means to be Black in America. The son of enslaved Africans, Dunbar wrote his poem while working for the Library of Congress, where he was the first African American to hold this position. In the poem, Dunbar used the metaphor of a free bird and a caged bird to speak to his experiences and frustrations. The poem’s power has resonated through generations. It’s the inspiration for Maya Angelou’s “
The Echo Played
The Echo Played
The Echo Played
This week’s post comes from teaching-writer Sagirah Shahid. In his 1899 poem “Sympathy,” Paul Laurence Dunbar captured some of the emotional weightiness of what it means to be Black in America. The son of enslaved Africans, Dunbar wrote his poem while working for the Library of Congress, where he was the first African American to hold this position. In the poem, Dunbar used the metaphor of a free bird and a caged bird to speak to his experiences and frustrations. The poem’s power has resonated through generations. It’s the inspiration for Maya Angelou’s “