Among the highlights are his being born in Mineola, New York, and raised in various little towns where his father served as a minister. Harry Dunbar lived in New York City while attending New York University and began teaching in Paul Laurence Dunbar Junior College, in Little Rock, Arkansas, being a professor of French and Dean of the Division of Liberal Arts & Sciences at New York City Technical College, City University of New York, and being Dean of Faculty, at Bergen Community College, Paramus, New Jersey.
His active stance has also seen Harry Dunbar in the U.S. Army during World War II and, after the war, studying at the Sorbonne, in Paris, France, courtesy of winning a Fulbright Award.
His long-time interest in computers and technology led him to start the column, "Dunbar on Black Books," on CompuServe.
Harry Dunbar's publications include his memoir, A Brother Like Me.
Harry B. Dunbar’s online newsletter "Dunbar on Black Books" features book reviews, annotations, and profiles of persons who write, publish, and promote nonfiction books by and about black people. It has been published monthly on the Internet since November 1997. A member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc., for over fifty years, Dunbar is a former chairman of its Publications Committee and a member of its Historical Commission. He contributed the epilogue to the seventeenth and final edition of The History of Alpha Phi Alpha: A Development in College Life, by Charles H. Wesley, which was published in 2000. The original edition was published in 1929. Black Nonfiction Books, Their Authors, and Their Publishers: A History, a Bibliography, and a Memoir is the result of a blending of these interests and experiences.
Although I had never met Harry in person, I feel that I had come to know him by phone and email. Harry was, in the truest sense of the word, a scholar and a gentleman, and the world is a poorer place without him.
Harry B. Dunbar has covered a lot of ground, Arkansas, Mississippi, New York, and France having been focal points in his life.
Harry B. Dunbar, Ph.D., is professor emeritus of humanities of New York City Technical College of the City University of New York. The author of A Brother Like Me: A Memoir, he is a bibliographer specializing in nonfiction books by and about black people in the United States at the end of the twentieth century. His reviews and annotations of books have been published in Multicultural Review, in The Sphinx, and elsewhere.
