D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton introduced on Tuesday the Paul Laurence Dunbar Commemorative Coin Act to direct the Secretary of the Treasury to mint the 50,000 five-dollar coins, 400,000 one-dollar coins and 750,000 half-dollar coins in recognition of Paul Laurence Dunbar, an influential Black poet.
The surcharge on each coin would benefit scholarships and similar activities of the Dunbar Alumni Federation, the alumni association for the historic Paul Laurence Dunbar Senior High School in Northwest, the first public high school for Blacks in the U.S.
“I am a proud graduate of Dunbar, a storied African American high school in our country,” Norton said. “It was the first college preparatory high school for African American students in the U.S.”
Norton added Dunbar “was revered by Americans as one of the greatest African American poets in our nation’s history.”
“Minting a coin in his honor would be particularly fitting since his poetry captured African Americans in their own terms no long after slavery, while raising funds for worthy causes undertaken by the Dunbar Alumni Federation,” she said.
Dunbar has many notable alumni, including Edwards Brooke, the first Black popularly elected U.S. senator; Wesley A. Brown, the first Black to graduate from the U.S. Naval Academy; Robert C. Weaver, the inaugural secretary for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development; and Vincent C. Gray, the fifth elected mayor of the District.
The Dunbar Alumni Federation was organized in 2002 to provide scholarships and other financial support to students and graduates of the high school.