Jupiter Hammon

Jupiter Hammon (October 17, 1711 – before 1806) was a black poet who in 1761 became the first African-American writer to be published in the present-day United States. Additional poems and sermons were also published. Born into slavery, Hammon was never emancipated. He was living in 1790 at the age of 79, and died by 1806. A devout Christian, he is considered one of the founders of African-American literature.

Born in 1711 in a house now known as Lloyd Manor in Lloyd Harbor, NY – per a Town of Huntington, NY historical marker dated 1990 – Hammon was held by four generations of the Lloyd family of Queens on Long Island, New York. His parents were both slaves held by the Lloyds. His mother and father were part of the first shipment of slaves to the Lloyd's estate in 1687. Unlike most slaves, his father, named Obadiah, had learned to read and write.

The Lloyds encouraged Hammon to attend school, where he also learned to read and write. Jupiter attended school with the Lloyd children. As an adult, he worked for them as a domestic servant, clerk, farmhand, and artisan in the Lloyd family business. He worked alongside Henry Lloyd (the father) in negotiating deals. Henry Lloyd said that Jupiter was so efficient in trade deals because he would quickly get the job done. He became a fervent Christian, as were the Lloyds.

His first published poem, "An Evening Thought. Salvation by Christ with Penitential Crienes: Composed by Jupiter Hammon, a Negro belonging to Mr. Lloyd of Queen's Village, on Long Island, the 25th of December, 1760," appeared as a broadside in 1761.

Eighteen years passed before his second work appeared in print, “An Address to Miss Phillis Wheatley.” Hammon wrote this poem while Lloyd had temporarily moved himself and the slaves he owned to Hartford, Connecticut, during the Revolutionary War. Hammon saw Wheatley as having succumbed to pagan influences in her writing, and so the “Address” consisted of twenty-one rhyming quatrains, each accompanied by a related Bible verse, that he thought would compel Wheatley to return to a Christian path in life. He would later publish two other poems and three sermon essays.

...
Wikipedia