Sympathy Theme of Race

"Sympathy" is a poem about a bird. So what in the wide world of sports does it have to do with race? A lot, actually—though we may not know this if we didn't know a little about the author of the poem, Paul Laurence Dunbar. Dunbar was an important African-American poet of the Harlem Renaissance, a period when there was a flowering of African-American literature and arts. And the fact of the matter is, a lot of writers and poets of the Harlem Renaissance wrote about race. After all, they were still living in a segregated country where blacks were treated like second-class citizens.

1. Why might the speaker of this poem be African-American? What is it about what he says in the poem suggests that he might be?
2. In what ways can we read the bird's plight as a metaphor for the plight of African-Americans generally?
3. Is the poem's title, "Sympathy," a call to readers to sympathize with the struggles of African-Americans? Why would the author want readers to sympathize with African-Americans?

This poem has nothing to do with race. It's about individual freedom, not racial freedom.

Not so fast there—this poem has everything to do with race.