Wendell Dabney was born in 1865 in Richmond, VA. He was one of the 10 graduates including Maggie Lena Mitchell Walker who protested segregated high school graduations at the Richmond Theatre in 1883. Dabney later moved to Cincinnati Ohio. He became a writer and started a newspaper The Ohio Enterprise in 1902. Walker hired Dabney to write her 1920 biography Maggie L. Walker: The Woman and Her Work. As a close family friend these words of condolence were very meaningful.