Influences on Paul Laurence Dunbar’s Work In the late eighteen hundreds, America was no longer a fledgling nation, now well established and rapidly evolving on the inside. These forces of change are most clearly exemplified by literary works in this time period. The short story “The Lynching of Jube Benson”, by Paul Laurence Dunbar, is a reactionary piece to the new forms and mediums of racism taking flight during this time. While lynching was not invented during the late eighteenth century, lynching reached the height of its popularity with the emergence of the first Ku Klux Klan. The primary target of this lawless group were African Americans. The state of this practice is criticized in the Dunbar’s short story. Upon reading of the