A New Kind of Literary Pulse

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Classics African American Literature 19th Century 20th Century  4 min

Anarchy Alley.

Alice Dunbar-Nelson

Alice Dunbar-Nelson

"Anarchy Alley." is from Alice Moore-Dunbar Nelson's Violets and Other Tales. In her early years, Alice Moore-Dunbar Nelson was a teacher who went on to become politically active for both African-American and women’s rights. Alice was an American poet, journalist, and political activist. Among the first generation born free in the South after the Civil War, she was one of the prominent African Americans involved in the artistic flourishing of the Harlem Renaissance. She wrote a collection of short stories and poems titled, Violets and Other Tales.

To the casual observer, the quaint, narrow, little alley that lies in the heart of the city is no more than any other of the numerous divisions of streets in which New Orleans delights. But to the idle wanderer, or he whose mission down its four squares of much trodden stones, is an aimless one,—whose eyes unforced to bend to the ground in thought of sordid ways and means, can peer at will into its quaint corners. Exchange Alley presents all the phases of a Latinized portion of America, a bit of Europe, perhaps, the restless, chafing, anarchistic Europe of to-day, in the midst of the quieter d