George Moses Horton facts for kids

A marker in North Carolina commemorating the life of George Moses Horton

George Moses Horton (1798–after 1867), "the Black bard of North Carolina", was an African-American poet from North Carolina who was enslaved. His first collection, The Hope of Liberty (1829), was intended to earn enough to purchase his freedom, but failed to do so. He did not become free until 1865, when Union troops and the Emancipation Proclamation reached North Carolina.

Horton is author of the first book of literature published in North Carolina. Phillis Wheatley published in London during the colonial period after Boston publishers turned her down. But Horton is the first African-American author to be published after the United States gained independence.

Biography

Horton was born into slavery on William Horton's plantation in 1798 in Northampton County, North Carolina. He was the sixth of ten children; the names of his parents are lost to history.

His owner relocated when Horton was a very young child; in 1800, the boy and several family members were taken to accompany the master to a new tobacco farm in rural Chatham County. In 1814 William Horton gave the youth as property to his relative James Horton. In 1819, the estate was broken up, and George Horton's family was separated. His poem "Division of an Estate", written years later, reflected on this experience.

Becoming known as a poet, Horton attempted unsuccessfully to earn enough money from his poetry to purchase his freedom. Sometime in the 1830s, he "married" (legal marriages were not permitted) Martha Snipes, an enslaved woman owned by Franklin Snipes in Chatham County. The couple had two children, Free and Rhody. Little else is known about the family.

At age 60, which means about 1858, he described himself as "Belonging to Hal Horton living now in Chatham County".

The editorial "Explanation" that opens The Hope of Freedom speaks of Horton's desire to emigrate to the new colony of Liberia; the collection was published so as to encourage donations. A few of the abolitionist papers suggested raising money to buy his freedom and pay his passage to the colony. These efforts were unsuccessful and Horton was not freed until 1865, when Union troops arrived in his area. Under the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, they liberated all the enslaved in the states that had seceded. Horton befriended a young Union officer with that group, William H. S. Banks. He left Chapel Hill with Banks, traveling to Philadelphia in the free state of Pennsylvania. Banks helped Horton get his collection Naked Genius published the same year.

Now a free man, at the age of 68 Horton lived in Philadelphia, where he continued to write poetry for local newspapers. His poem "Forbidden to Ride on the Street Cars" expressed his disappointment in the unjust treatment of Blacks after emancipation. Arriving in Philadelphia before the summer of 1866, he wrote Sunday school stories on behalf of friends who lived in the city.

Disappointed with the racial discrimination he encountered in Philadelphia, Horton did succeed in emigrating to Bexley, Liberia, arriving January 7, 1867. This is the last known reference to him. While later death dates are found in some recent publications, his death location, date, and burial are unknown. He may have returned to Philadelphia. There is no known photograph or drawing of Horton.

The Black bard of North Carolina

Horton disliked farm work, and while young, in his limited free time he taught himself to read using spelling books, the Bible, and hymnals. Learning poetry and snippets of literature, Horton composed poems in his mind, since he did not learn to write until much later. The University of North Carolina, in Chapel Hill, was 8 miles (13 km) from his home. As a young adult, Horton delivered produce to the university students and kitchens. He got along well with the students and they saw his gifts: "Some how or other they discoverd a spark of genius in me". He composed and recited poems for students, some of whom transcribed his pieces. In addition, he composed poems, usually love poems, by commission for individual students at 25¢ to 75¢ each, "besides many respectable suits of clothes". The students also gave him many books: he tells us of "Murray's English Grammar and its accordant branches [(Murray's studies of other languages)]; Samuel Johnson's Dictionary in miniature, and also Walker's [Rhyming Dictionary] and [Thomas] Sheridan's [A Complete Dictionary of the English Language], and parts of others. And other books of use they gave me, which I had no chance to peruse minutely, Milton's Paradise Lost, [James] Thompson's Seasons, parts of Homer's Iliad and Virgil's Ænead ( [sic]), Beauties of Shakespear, Beauties of Byron, part of Plutarch, [Jedidiah] Morse's Geography, The Columbian Orator, [Richard] Snowden's History of the [American] Revolution, [Edward] Young's Night Thoughts, and some others".

Horton mentions Leonidas Polk as among the many students he had contact with. This indicates a date in the early 1820s.

In 1828 a number of newspapers in North Carolina and beyond discussed Horton's work. In 1829, his poems were published in a collection titled The Hope of Liberty, which was intended but failed to raise enough funds to purchase his freedom. The book, funded by the politically liberal journalist Joseph Gales, was published the same year as David Walker's An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World.

Horton is believed to be the first Southern Black to publish poetry. Though he knew how to read, he published the book before he had learned how to write. As he recalled, "I fell to work in my head, and composed several undigested pieces."

By 1832, Horton had learned to write, helped by Caroline Lee Hentz, a writer and the wife of a professor at the university. Teaching Blacks to read and write was legal in North Carolina until 1836, when restrictions were increased because of fears about slave revolts. She also helped get at least two of his poems published in a newspaper.

Horton had composed a poem on the death of Hentz's first child. As he recalled: "She was extremely pleased with the dirge which I wrote on the death of her much lamented primogenial infant, and for which she gave me much credit and a handsome reward. Not being able to write myself, I dictated while she wrote." She sent another of Horton's poems to her hometown newspaper in Lancaster, Massachusetts, where it was published on April 8, 1828, as "Liberty and Slavery".

Horton's first book was republished in 1837 under the title Poems by a Slave. It was reprinted with a biography and poetry by Phillis Wheatley a year later. This book was published by Boston-based publisher and abolitionist Isaac Knapp. Newspapers again took note of Horton, calling him "the colored bard of Chapel Hill".

In 1845, Horton published another book of poetry, The Poetical Works of George M. Horton, The Colored Bard of North-Carolina, To Which Is Prefixed The Life of the Author, Written by Himself. Newspapers took notice again in December–January 1849 – 1850, and advertisements for the book were printed in a Hillsborough newspaper from 1852 into 1853. Horton was given direct credit for some poems published in newspapers in 1857 and 1858. A short announcement/review of his last book, Naked Genius appeared in the Raleigh Daily Progress on 31 August 1865.

Horton gained the admiration of North Carolina Governor John Owen, influential newspapermen Horace Greeley and William Lloyd Garrison, and numerous other Northern abolitionists. He was said to be an admirer of Byron, whose poetry he used as a model.

Writing

George Moses Horton's signature

After Horton's first poem was published in the Lancaster, Massachusetts, Gazette, his works were published in other newspapers, such as the Register in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Freedom's Journal in New York City. Horton's poetic style was typical of contemporary European poetry and was similar to poems written by free white contemporaries, likely a reflection of his reading and his work for commission. He wrote both sonnets and ballads. His earlier works focused on his life in slavery. Such topics, however, were more generalized and not necessarily based on his personal experience. He referred to his life on "vile accursed earth" and the "drudg'ry, pain, and toil" of life, as well as his oppression "because my skin is black".

His first collection was focused on the issues of slavery and bondage. He did not gain enough in sales from that book to purchase his freedom; in his second book, he mentions slavery only twice. The change in theme is also likely due to the more restrictive climate in the South in the years leading up to the Civil War.

His later works, especially those written after his emancipation, expressed rural and pastoral themes. Like other early Black American writers such as Jupiter Hammon and Phillis Wheatley, Horton was deeply influenced by the Bible and African-American religion.

The earliest known critical commentary on Horton's writing is from 1909 by University of North Carolina professor Collier Cobb. He dismissed Horton's antislavery themes, saying: "George never really cared for more liberty than he had, but was fond of playing to the grandstand.".

In 2017 the only known essay by Horton, "Individual Influence", was published for the first time.

Horton "firsts"

• The first African American to publish a book in the United States.
• The first published North Carolina author of literature.
• The first enslaved American to publish a book.
• The "first American slave to protest his bondage in verse; the first African American to publish a book in the South; the only slave to earn a significant income by selling his poems; the only poet of any race to produce a book of poems before he could write; and the only slave to publish two volumes of poetry while in bondage and another shortly after emancipation."

Legacy

Building towards his remembrance, biographies began to appear. The first was by Kemp Plummer Battle in May 1888, at that time President of the University of North Carolina. J. Donald Cameron noted Horton among notable North Carolina poets in 1890, in a speech that was reported in several newspapers. Battle reprised his thoughts on Horton in his history of the university, published in 1907. In 1909 UNC professor Collier Cobb wrote a paper on Horton, which he published in 1925 at his own expense. Horton was remembered at the University of North Carolina on the occasion of the visit of James Weldon Johnson. The centennial of his first book was noted in the New York Age after it was noted in Greensboro.

• In 1927 Winston-Salem, North Carolina, opened a segregated library for Blacks in a YWCA building; it was named for George Moses Horton.
• In the 1930s, A Horton School, for Black children, opened in Pittsboro, North Carolina. It later became Horton High School. After integration in the 1970s, it became Horton Middle School.
• In June 1978, North Carolina Governor Jim Hunt declared June 28 “George Moses Horton Day.”
• In the 1990s, North Carolina erected a historical marker about Horton at the intersection of U.S. 15/501 and Mount Gilead Church Road, Chatham County Road 1700 (35° 47.618′ N, 79° 5.992′ W). According to the marker, he lived about 2 miles (3.2 km) to the southeast. (See photo)
• In 1996 Horton was inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame.
• Also in 1996, the George Moses Horton Society for the Study of African American Poetry was founded in Chapel Hill.
• In 1997, Horton was named as Historic Poet Laureate of Chatham County, North Carolina.
• In 2006, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill named a dormitory for George Moses Horton; it is believed to be the first university dormitory in the country to be named for a slave.
• In 2015 author/illustrator Don Tate published Poet: The Remarkable Story of George Moses Horton, an illustrated biography for children. The Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina hosted the national launch of the book on September 3, 2015.

Published works