Abstract: This essay proposes that the genre of black naturalism, most commonly associated with 1940s African American literature, begins with Paul Laurence Dunbar’s writings on African American migration to the urban North. Although Dunbar writes about black migration in a naturalist manner as early as 1897, his 1902 novel, The Sport of the Gods , is his most comprehensive black naturalist statement. Other critics have described the novel as naturalist but overstate the degree to which its naturalism consists in a critique of the genre’s racism or limited relevance to African Americans. Instead of treating the whiteness of naturalism as a given for Dunbar, I argue that he inaugurates a specifically black naturalism around the turn of the twentieth century to respond to the consolidation of Jim Crow, black migration to the urban North, and increasing class separation between African Americans.
Cameron Loftis (Sun,) studied this question.