POET PROFILE

George Marion McClellan was born on September 29, 1860, in Belfast, Tennessee. He was a poet, writer, minister, and educator.

Although very little is known about his early life, in 1885 at the age of 25, he got his degree from Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, and two years later he received his master's degree, also from Fisk.

During the beginning of the 1880s, McClellan composed poetry and in 1895 published "Poems," a collection of his works. He republished this volume in 1896 under the title "Songs of a Southener," and in 1916 he published his second collection of poetry, "The Path of Dreams."

Although his poetry and other writings were not considered protest poetry, like a lot of the early Black poets before him, his works did express some consciousness of race and the struggle for equality.

In 1891, McClellan received a bachelor of divinity degree from the Hartford Theological Seminary in Hartford, Connecticut and later served as a Congregational Minister back in Nashville.  

Between 1894 and 1896 he worked as a chaplain and teacher at the State Normal School for Colored Persons in Normal, Alabama.

In 1901 his poetry appeared in an exhibit at the Pan American Exposition, and a subsequent review in the New York Times compared his work to that of the renowned poet Paul Laurence Dunbar.

Throughout the remainder of his life, McClellan continued to fight for racial justice, dignity, and equality for Black people. He died in 1934 at the age of 73. 

TO READ A COMPREHENSIVE BIO AND SAMPLE HIS POETRY GOOGLE-SEARCH HIS NAME. NOTE: To avoid confusion with someone of the same, name please Google-search George M. McClellan, poet