George Moses Horton facts for kids

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

George Moses Horton (born 1798, died after 1867) was an African-American poet. He was known as "the Black bard of North Carolina." George was born into slavery.

His first book of poems, The Hope of Liberty (published in 1829), was meant to help him earn enough money to buy his freedom. However, this plan did not work. George Moses Horton finally became free in 1865. This happened when Union soldiers arrived in North Carolina and the Emancipation Proclamation took effect there.

Horton wrote the first book of literature ever published in North Carolina. Another famous African-American poet, Phillis Wheatley, had her book published in London earlier. But George Moses Horton was the first African-American author to publish a book after the United States became an independent country.

George Moses Horton's Life Story

George Moses Horton was born into slavery in 1798. This happened on a plantation owned by William Horton in Northampton County, North Carolina. He was the sixth of ten children. We do not know the names of his parents.

When George was very young, his owner moved. In 1800, George and some of his family were taken to a new tobacco farm. This farm was in rural Chatham County. In 1814, William Horton gave George to his relative, James Horton. In 1819, George's family was separated when the plantation was divided. Years later, he wrote a poem called "Division of an Estate" about this sad experience.

As George became known for his poetry, he tried to earn money from his poems. He hoped to buy his freedom, but he was not successful. Around the 1830s, he married Martha Snipes. She was also an enslaved woman in Chatham County. Enslaved people were not allowed to have legal marriages. George and Martha had two children, named Free and Rhody. We do not know much else about his family.

When he was about 60 years old (around 1858), he said he belonged to "Hal Horton" in Chatham County.

The book The Hope of Freedom mentioned that Horton wanted to move to the new colony of Liberia. The book was published to encourage people to donate money for this. Some newspapers that were against slavery suggested collecting money to buy his freedom and pay for his trip. These efforts did not work.

Horton was not freed until 1865. This was when Union soldiers arrived in his area during the American Civil War. The Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 freed all enslaved people in the states that had left the Union. Horton became friends with a young Union officer named William H. S. Banks. George left Chapel Hill with Banks and traveled to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which was a free state. Banks helped Horton publish his poetry collection called Naked Genius that same year.

Now a free man, Horton lived in Philadelphia at age 68. He continued to write poems for local newspapers. He wrote a poem called "Forbidden to Ride on the Street Cars." This poem showed his sadness about the unfair treatment of Black people even after they were freed. He arrived in Philadelphia before the summer of 1866. He also wrote stories for Sunday schools for his friends in the city.

Horton was disappointed by the racial discrimination he found in Philadelphia. He did manage to move to Bexley, Liberia. He arrived there on January 7, 1867. This is the last time we know for sure where he was. While some books say he died later, we do not know exactly when or where he died, or where he was buried. He might have returned to Philadelphia. There are no known photographs or drawings of George Moses Horton.

How George Moses Horton Became a Poet

George Moses Horton did not like farm work. When he was young, he used his limited free time to teach himself to read. He used spelling books, the Bible, and hymnals. He learned poetry and bits of literature. Horton would create poems in his mind because he did not learn to write until much later.

The University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill was about 8 miles from his home. As a young man, Horton delivered food to the university students and kitchens. He got along well with the students. They saw that he was very talented. He said, "Some how or other they discoverd a spark of genius in me."

He would create and recite poems for the students. Some students wrote down his poems for him. He also wrote poems, often love poems, for students who paid him. He charged 25 to 75 cents for each poem. He also received "many respectable suits of clothes." The students also gave him many books. He mentioned reading books like English Grammar, Samuel Johnson's Dictionary, and Walker's Rhyming Dictionary. He also read parts of famous works like Milton's Paradise Lost, Homer's Iliad, and Virgil's Aeneid.

In 1828, many newspapers in North Carolina and other places talked about Horton's poems. In 1829, his poems were published in a book called The Hope of Liberty. This book was meant to raise money for his freedom, but it did not succeed. A journalist who supported liberal ideas, Joseph Gales, paid for the book. It was published in the same year as David Walker's important book, An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World.

George Moses Horton is thought to be the first Black person in the Southern United States to publish poetry. Even though he knew how to read, he published his first book before he learned how to write. He remembered, "I fell to work in my head, and composed several undigested pieces."

By 1832, Horton had learned to write. Caroline Lee Hentz, a writer and the wife of a university professor, helped him. Teaching Black people to read and write was allowed in North Carolina until 1836. After that, rules became stricter because people feared slave revolts. Caroline Lee Hentz also helped get at least two of his poems published in a newspaper.

Horton wrote a poem when Hentz's first child died. He remembered: "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. It was published on April 8, 1828, and was called "Liberty and Slavery."

Horton's first book was published again in 1837. It was called Poems by a Slave. A year later, it was reprinted with a biography and poems by Phillis Wheatley. This book was published by Isaac Knapp, an abolitionist publisher in Boston. Newspapers again noticed Horton, calling him "the colored bard of Chapel Hill."

In 1845, Horton published another book of poetry. It was titled 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 mentioned him again in late 1849 and early 1850. Advertisements for his 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 review of his last book, Naked Genius, appeared in the Raleigh Daily Progress on August 31, 1865.

Horton earned the respect of important people. These included North Carolina Governor John Owen, famous newspapermen Horace Greeley and William Lloyd Garrison, and many other people in the North who were against slavery. People said he admired Lord Byron, a famous poet, and used his style as a guide.

What George Moses Horton Wrote

George Moses Horton's signature

After Horton's first poem was published in the Lancaster, Massachusetts, Gazette, his poems appeared in other newspapers. These included the Register in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Freedom's Journal in New York City. Horton's poetry style was similar to the popular European poetry of his time. This was probably because of what he read and the poems he wrote for money. He wrote both sonnets and ballads.

His earlier poems often talked about his life in slavery. However, these topics were more general and not always about his own experiences. He wrote about his life on "vile accursed earth" and the "drudg'ry, pain, and toil" of life. He also wrote about being oppressed "because my skin is black."

His first book focused on slavery and being held captive. He did not sell enough copies of that book to buy his freedom. In his second book, he only mentioned slavery twice. This change in topics was likely because the Southern states became more strict about discussing slavery before the Civil War.

His later poems, especially those written after he was freed, talked about country life and nature. Like other early Black American writers such as Jupiter Hammon and Phillis Wheatley, Horton was greatly influenced by the Bible and African-American religious beliefs.

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

Amazing "Firsts" for George Moses Horton

• He was the first African American to publish a book in the United States.
• He was the first author from North Carolina to publish a book of literature.
• He was the first enslaved American to publish a book.
• He was the first enslaved American to write poems protesting his bondage.
• He was the first African American to publish a book in the Southern United States.
• He was the only enslaved person to earn a lot of money by selling his poems.
• He was the only poet of any race to publish a book of poems before he could write.
• He was the only enslaved person to publish two books of poetry while still enslaved. He published another book soon after he became free.

George Moses Horton's Lasting Impact

People started writing biographies to remember George Moses Horton. The first one was by Kemp Plummer Battle in May 1888. At that time, Battle was the President of the University of North Carolina. J. Donald Cameron mentioned Horton among important North Carolina poets in 1890. This speech was reported in several newspapers. Battle wrote about Horton again in his history of the university, published in 1907. In 1909, a UNC professor named Collier Cobb wrote a paper about Horton. He published it himself in 1925. Horton was remembered at the University of North Carolina when James Weldon Johnson visited. The 100-year anniversary of his first book was noted in the New York Age after it was mentioned in Greensboro.

• In 1927, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, opened a library for Black people in a YWCA building. It was named the George Moses Horton Library.
• In the 1930s, a school for Black children called Horton School opened in Pittsboro, North Carolina. It later became Horton High School. After schools were integrated 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 put up a historical marker about Horton. It is at the intersection of U.S. 15/501 and Mount Gilead Church Road, Chatham County Road 1700. The marker says he lived about 2 miles to the southeast.
• In 1996, Horton was added to the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame.
• Also in 1996, the George Moses Horton Society for the Study of African American Poetry was started in Chapel Hill.
• In 1997, Horton was named the Historic Poet Laureate of Chatham County, North Carolina.
• In 2006, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill named a dormitory after George Moses Horton. It is believed to be the first university dormitory in the country named for an enslaved person.
• In 2015, author and illustrator Don Tate published Poet: The Remarkable Story of George Moses Horton. This was 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.

Books by George Moses Horton

• The Hope of Liberty (1829)
• Poems by a Slave (1837)
• 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 (1845)
• Naked Genius (1865)