George Moses Horton

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George Moses Horton

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George Moses Horton | American poetGeorge Moses Horton: George Moses Horton, African American poet who wrote sentimental love poems and antislavery protests. He was one of the first professional black writers in America. A slave from birth, Horton was relocated, in 1800, to a plantation near Chapel Hill, seat of the University of North Carolina, where

In a Lost Essay, a Glimpse of an Elusive Poet and SlaveA previously unknown manuscript by George Moses Horton, a poet and slave, opens a window onto eerily familiar debates about race, power and free speech on campus.

George Moses HortonBorn a slave on William Horton’s tobacco plantation, George Moses Horton taught himself to read. Around 1815 he began composing poems in his head, saying them aloud and “selling” them to an increasingly large crowd of buyers at the weekly Chapel Hill farmers market. Students at the nearby University of North Carolina bought his love poems and lent him books. As his fame spread, he gained the attention of Caroline Lee Whiting Hentz, a novelist and professor’s wife who transcribed his poetry and helped publish it in her hometown newspaper. With her assistance, Horton published his first collection of poetry, The Hope of Liberty (1829), becoming the first African American man to publish a book in the South—and one of the first to publicly protest his slavery in poetry.Horton hoped to earn enough money from the publication of his book to buy his freedom, but his attempts were denied despite...

POET: THE REMARKABLE STORY OF GEORGE MOSES HORTON

Nonfiction picture book about George Moses Horton, an enslaved poet, who became the first African American to be published in the south, writing poetry that protested his enslavement. Written and Illustrated by Don Tate.

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