Jupiter Hammon, First African-American Writer, Poem Discovered By Student: Firsthand accounts of American slavery are certainly a limited treasure. Any opportunity to read a description of what being subjected to the institution was like is not only hard to come by, but also a gem of African American history.
That's why a University of Texas student was so delighted, when she discovered one of the earliest poems by Jupiter Hammon, the country's first published black writer.
Julie McCown, a doctoral student, found the poem while researching Hammon.
"It's both really exciting, but then it's also hard to believe," McCown said. "Who am I to happen across this?"
Hammon, who was born a slave in 1711 and owned by multiple generations of a family in Long Island, New York, is known for his 1787 essay "An Address To The Negroes Of The State Of New York" that includes the famous line: "If we should ever get to Heaven, we shall find nobody to reproach us for being black, or for being slaves."
