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George Moses Horton

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For other people named George Horton, see George Horton (disambiguation).
A marker in North Carolina commemorating the life of George Moses Horton

George Moses Horton (1798–1884) was an African-American poet, the first to be published in the Southern United States. His book was published in 1828 while he was still enslaved in North Carolina. He was emancipated late during the Civil War.

Biography

Horton was born into slavery on William Horton's plantation in Northampton County, North Carolina.[1] He was the sixth of ten children, though the names of his parents are lost to history.[2] His owner relocated when Horton was a very young child; in 1800, he and several family members were moved to a tobacco farm in rural Chatham County. William Horton gave the youth as property to his relative James Horton in 1814.[1] In 1819, the estate was broken up, and George Horton's family was separated. (His poem "Division of an Estate" reflected on the experience years later).[2]

Horton disliked farm work and in his limited free time, he taught himself to read using spelling books, the Bible, and hymnals.[2] Learning poetry and snippets of literature, Horton composed poems in his mind. As a young adult, Horton delivered produce to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he composed and recited poems for students, some of whom transcribed his compositions. Horton also composed poems, usually love poems, by commission for the students at 25 or 50 cents each.[1] Considering the difficulty of earning income from poetry, Horton was likely one of the few professional poets in the South at the time.[3]

In 1829, his poems were published in a collection titled The Hope of Liberty, which was intended to raise funds for his release from slavery.[4] 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.[5] Horton is believed to be the first Southern black to publish poetry.[1] Though he knew how to read, he published the book before he learned how to write. As he recalled, "I fell to work in my head, and composed several undigested pieces."[6]

By 1832, he had learned to write, having learned with the aid of Caroline Lee Hentz, who was the wife of a professor and a writer herself. She also assisted in publishing at least two of his poems in a newspaper.[1] Horton had composed a poem on the death of Hentz's 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."[6] She sent one of Horton's poems to her hometown newspaper in Lancaster, Massachusetts, where it was published on April 8, 1828, as "Liberty and Slavery".[2]

Horton's first book was republished under the title Poems by a Slave in 1837. It was collected with a biography and poetry by Phillis Wheatley a year later in a book called Memoir and Poems of Phillis Wheatley, a Native African and Slave: Also Poems by a Slave.[7] The book was published by Boston-based publisher and abolitionist Isaac Knapp. It is believed to be the first complete collection of Wheatley's poems in book form.[8] 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. The moniker, "Colored Bard of North-Carolina", was coined by his new publisher.

Horton gained the admiration of North Carolina Governor John Owen, influential newspapermen Horace Greeley and William Lloyd Garrison, and numerous Northern abolitionists.

Sometime in the 1830s, Horton had married 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.[9]

Horton had written about his interest in the new nation of Liberia. A few of the abolitionist papers called to raise money so that Horton could see his dream of life in Liberia come true. He was not emancipated until 1865, however; when he met the Ninth Cavalry from Michigan. A young officer with that group, William H. S. Banks, collaborated with Horton on the collection Naked Genius the same year.[7] At the age of 68, Horton moved to Pennsylvania as a freeman, 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.[9] In Philadelphia, he wrote Sunday school stories on behalf of friends who lived in the city. His exact death location and date are unknown.[7] At least one researcher suggests Horton moved to Liberia at some point.[9]

Poetry

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 the Freedom's Journal in New York City.[2] 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.[3] He wrote both sonnets and ballads. His earlier works focused on his life in servitude. Such topics, however, were more generalized and not necessarily based on his personal experience. Nevertheless, 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".[3]

His first collection was focused heavily on the issue of slavery and bondage. Likely because sales from that book were not enough for him to purchase his freedom, his second book mentions slavery only twice.[10] 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.[9]

His later works, especially those written after his emancipation, were more rural and pastoral. Like other early black American writers such as Jupiter Hammon and Phillis Wheatley, Horton was deeply influenced by the Bible and African-American religion.[10]

The earliest known critical commentary on Horton's writing is from 1909 by UNC 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.".[11]

Legacy

  • In 1927 Winston-Salem, North Carolina opened a segregated library for blacks in a YWCA building; it was named for George Moses Horton.[12]
  • In 1996 Horton was inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame.[13]
  • Also in 1996, the George Moses Horton Society for the Study of African American Poetry was founded.[13]
  • In 1997, Horton was named Historic Poet Laureate of Chatham County, North Carolina.[13]
  • In 2006, UNC 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.[14]
  • In 2015 author/illustrator Don Tate published Poet: The Remarkable Story of George Moses Horton, an illustrated biography for children. The Wilson Library at UNC hosted the national launch of the book on September 3, 2015.[15]

Published works

  • The Hope of Liberty (1829)
  • Poems by a Slave (1837)
  • The Poetical Works of George M. Horton (1845)
  • Naked Genius (1865, with William H. S. Banks)

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Johnson, Lonnell E. "George Moses Horton" in African American Authors, 1745-1945: Bio-bibliographical Critical Sourcebook (Emmanuel S. Nelson, editor). Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000: 239. ISBN 0-313-30910-8
  2. ^ a b c d e Page, Amanda. "George Moses Horton" in The North Carolina Roots of African American Literature: An Anthology (William L. Andrews, editor). The University of North Carolina Press, 2006: 45. ISBN 0-8078-2994-3
  3. ^ a b c O'Brien, Michael. Intellectual Life and the American South, 1810-1860. The University of North Carolina Press, 2010: 181. ISBN 978-0-8078-3400-8
  4. ^ Brown, Sterling (1937). Negro Poetry and Drama. Washington, DC: Westphalia Press. p. 6. ISBN 1935907549.
  5. ^ Gordon, Dexter B. Black Identity: Rhetoric, Ideology, and Nineteenth-Century Black Nationalism. Southern Illinois University, 2003: 2009. ISBN 0-8093-2485-7
  6. ^ a b Hager, Christopher. Word by Word: Emancipation and the Act of Writing. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013: 69. ISBN 978-0-674-05986-3
  7. ^ a b c Johnson, Lonnell E. "George Moses Horton" in African American Authors, 1745-1945: Bio-bibliographical Critical Sourcebook (Emmanuel S. Nelson, editor). Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000: 240. ISBN 0-313-30910-8
  8. ^ Cavitch, Max. American Elegy: The Poetry of Mourning from the Puritans to Whitman. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2007: 193. ISBN 978-0-8166-4892-4
  9. ^ a b c d Page, Amanda. "George Moses Horton" in The North Carolina Roots of African American Literature: An Anthology (William L. Andrews, editor). The University of North Carolina Press, 2006: 46. ISBN 0-8078-2994-3
  10. ^ a b Johnson, Lonnell E. "George Moses Horton" in African American Authors, 1745-1945: Bio-bibliographical Critical Sourcebook (Emmanuel S. Nelson, editor). Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000: 241. ISBN 0-313-30910-8
  11. ^ Johnson, Lonnell E. "George Moses Horton" in African American Authors, 1745-1945: Bio-bibliographical Critical Sourcebook (Emmanuel S. Nelson, editor). Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000: 242. ISBN 0-313-30910-8
  12. ^ Rawls, Molly Grogan. Winston-Salem: From the Collection of Frank B. Jones Jr. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2006: 62. ISBN 978-0-7385-4324-6
  13. ^ a b c Sherman, Joan R. "Horton, George Moses" in African American Lives (Henry Louis Gates and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, editors). New York: Oxford University Press, 2004: 415. ISBN 0-19-516024-X
  14. ^ Baker, Elizabeth (September 2, 2015). "Former slave poet honored in book". The Daily Tar Heel. Retrieved 22 October 2015.
  15. ^ "Poet: The Remarkable Story of George Moses Horton Book Launch Sept. 3 at Wilson Library". UNC Library News and Events. August 12, 2015. Retrieved 22 October 2015.
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