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Literature

Early African-American Poets

Who was the first poet and tract writer to publish a poem as a separate work, in America?

In 1760 Jupiter Hammon (1711–c. 1806), poet and tract writer, was the first black to publish a poem as a separate work, in America. This poem was the eighty-eight lines of “An Evening Thought. Salvation by Christ, with Penitential Cries: Composed by Jupiter Hammon, a Negro belonging to Mr. (Henry) Lloyd of Queen’s Village on Long Island, the 25th of December, 1760.” Born a slave on Long Island, Hammon revealed an intensely religious conviction of the Methodist variety in this and his other publications. He became noteworthy as well for providing the first and most comprehensive writing on black theology and was the first to write anti-slavery protest literature in America.



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