Dunbar’s 1900 collection opens with a camp-meeting sermon and the story of Gideon, an enslaved man who keeps his promise to stay with his master’s family during the Civil War. Other tales follow a family’s free papers, a boy jockey in The Finish of Patsy Barnes, a young man seeking work in a northern city, and an office-seeker learning how politics treats Black loyalty.
Some plantation pieces carry the sentimental conventions of 1900, while others are pointed about prejudice; together they show Dunbar’s range. Download the free EPUB.