ABSTRACT
The scene is the basement of Baker Building, Case Western Reserve University campus, Cleveland, Ohio, where my History 261 class on African-American History from the post-Civil War period to 1945 meets. Enter Tony Sias, a Cleveland-based actor and director as well as the then-coordinated arts program director at one of the largest settlement houses serving the black community in northeast Ohio. Sias is “shadowed” by Paul Laurence Dunbar, a nineteenth-century poet dubbed the “Poet Laureate of the Negro Race” by Booker T. Washington. 1 After introductions and salutations and a moment of silence, Sias's facial expression changes. His eyes open wide. A smile gathers on his face. His body goes from straight-backed to a little more relaxed, like party-hanging relaxed. His baritone fills the room, unfolding in dialect, the lines of Dunbar's poem “The Party” rolling from his tongue:
