SUMMIT AND VALE.
The light hangs over the mountain top,
But gray and misty the plain;
The sun’s a-glow in eternal snow,
But down in the valley, the rain.
And life is so, the sun a-glow
On the mountains far, while the rain’s below.
by American poet Alice Dunbar Nelson, born July 19, 1875, in New Orleans, Louisiana
Beyond the delicate imagery of her poetry, Dunbar Nelson lived a complex and quietly radical life as a pioneering writer, educator, and civil rights activist. Born to a mixed‑race family in post‑Reconstruction New Orleans, she became one of the first Black women to publish a collection of short stories, opening doors that had long been closed to women of color in American literature.
Her public literary achievements ran parallel to her forceful political work. In Delaware, she investigated conditions at the Industrial School for Colored Girls and pushed for reforms to protect vulnerable Black children. She also organized suffrage campaigns, led anti‑lynching efforts, and used her journalism to expose racial injustice with a sharp, fearless clarity. The empathy in her verses was matched by a lifelong commitment to activism, making her one of the most dynamic and multifaceted figures of the early 20th‑century Black intellectual world.
Image via Wikimedia Commons, public domain
