The story The Scapegoat by Paul Laurence Dunbar opens with a brief survey of Robinson Asbury’s rise from a bootblack to an owner of a barbershop-social club for blacks in the town of Cadgers. With this shop as a base, Asbury becomes politically visible and, with the patronage of party managers, the town’s recognized black leader. Because Asbury has further ambitions, he studies law on the side and, with the help of Judge Davis, a white man and the only member of the political establishment with moral principles, is admitted to the bar. Rather than leave the black district and enter the elite class, Asbury opens up a law office next to his barbershop, declaring a loyalty to the black people who gave him his success. Representative American Negroes Paul Laurence Dunbar, african-american poet, novelist, and playwright of the late 19th and early 20th centuries (1872-1906). As a black writer at the turn of the twentieth century, Dunbar had a problem, to some extent imposed on him by William Dean Howells—whether to write in dialect and meet certain expectations of a white audience, or to write in standard English, which he preferred, because he wanted to...

Narrator: Mark Bowen
Listening Length: 35:52