“I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings” - A celebration of Paul Laurence Dunbar. Dr. Minnita Daniel-Cox, Dr. Herbert W. Martin, and John Benjamin present an evening of song and spoken word celebrating the timeless works of one of America’s most influential poets, Paul Laurence Dunbar. Hailed as “the first American Negro poet of real literary distinction,’ by James Weldon Johnson, and the “poet laureate of the Negro Race” by Mary Church Terrell, Dunbar was the first African-American to gain national eminence as a poet.