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America's First Negro Poet: The Complete Works Of Jupiter Hammon Of Long Island, Jupiter Hammon, Stanley Austin Ransom Jr, Oscar Wegelin, Vernon Loggins

Electronic Texts in American Studies

Introduction by Stanley Austin Ransom, Jr.

Biographical Sketch of Jupiter Hammon by Oscar Wegelin

Critical Analysis of the Works of Jupiter Hammon by Vernon Loggins

THE POETRY OF JUPITER HAMMON

An Evening Thought. Salvation by Christ, With Penetential Cries

An Address to Miss Phillis Wheatly

A Poem for Children, With Thoughts on Death

A Dialogue Entitled, "The Kind Master and the Dutiful Servant"

THE PROSE OF JUPITER HAMMON

A Winter Piece

An Evening's Improvement

An Address to the Negroes of the State of New York

Bibliography of the Works of Jupiter Hammon

Caroling Dusk: An Anthology Of Verse By Negro Poets, Countee Cullen , Editor

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Poets: Paul Laurence Dunbar • Joseph S. Cotter, Sr • James Weldon Johnson • William Edward Burghardt Du Bois • William Stanley Braithwaite • James Edward Mccall • Angelina Weld Grimke • Anne Spencer • Mary Effie Lee Newsome • John Frederick Matheus • Fenton Johnson • Jessie Fauset • Alice Dunbar Nelson • Georgia Douglas Johnson • Claude McKay • Jean Toomer • Joseph S. Cotter, Jr • Blanche Taylor Dickinson • Frank Horne • Lewis Alexander • Sterling A. Brown • Clarissa Scott Delany • Langston Hughes • Gwendolyn B. Bennett • Anna Bontemps • Albert Rice • …

Color, Countee Cullen

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Poet, playwright, novelist, graduate of DeWitt Clinton High, New York University, and Harvard University, Countee Cullen (1903–1946) emerged as a leading literary figure of the Harlem Renaissance. Color (1925), his first published book of poetry, confronts head-on what W.E.B. DuBois called “the problem of the 20th century—the problem of the color line.” The work includes 72 poems, such as the following:

Incident (For Eric Walrond)

Once riding in old Baltimore,
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.

Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, …

The Heroic Slave, Frederick Douglass

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Frederick Douglass based this story on the real-life heroism of Madison Washington, who led the largest successful slave revolt in U.S. history in 1841. His story is told through the eyes and words of two white men. First, Mr. Listwell from Ohio sees Madison enslaved in Virginia, then a fugitive in Ohio, and finally a recaptured returnee bound from Richmond to the slave markets of New Orleans. Lastly, Tom Grant, the mate on the slave transport Creole, describes the ship’s takeover by its human cargo and its passage to the British Bahamas, where 128 men and women stepped out of …

An Address To The Slaves Of The United States Of America, Henry Highland Garnet

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Brethren and Fellow-Citizens :

Your brethren of the north, east, and west have been accustomed to meet together in National Conventions, to sympathize with each other, and to weep over your unhappy condition. In these meetings we have addressed all classes of the free, but we have never until this time, sent a word of consolation and advice to you. We have been contented in sitting still and mourning over your sorrows, earnestly hoping that before this day, your sacred liberties would have been restored. But, we have hoped in vain. Years have rolled on, and tens of thousands have …

The Past And The Present Condition, And The Destiny, Of The Colored Race, Henry Highland Garnet

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Henry Highland Garnet’s 1848 address to the Female Benevolent Society of Troy, New York, published that year, is an eloquent survey and reclaiming for the race of its share in the Western intellectual tradition. That the ancient Egyptians were Africans, that the Song of Solomon was addressed to an African woman, that the Ethiopians warriors were celebrated by Homer, that Moses’ wife was Ethiopian, that Hannibal, Terence, Euclid, Cyprian, Origen, and Augustine all were of African ancestry—these facts are adduced by Garnet to suggest both the heritage and the potential achievements of the Africans in America. Gar-net surveys the origin …

An Appeal In Favor Of That Class Of Americans Called Africans, Lydia Maria Child, Paul Royster (Editor)

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The roots of white supremacy lie in the institution of negro slavery. From the 15th through the 19th century, white Europeans trafficked in abducted and enslaved Africans and justified the practice with excuses that seemed somehow to reconcile the injustice with their professed Christianity. The United States was neither the first nor the last nation to abolish slavery, but its proclaimed principles of freedom and equality were made ironic by the nation’s reluctance to extend recognition to all Americans.

“Americans” is what Mrs. Child calls those fellow countrymen of African ancestry; citizenship and equality are what she proposed beyond simple …

Walker’S Appeal, In Four Articles; Together With A Preamble, To The Coloured Citizens Of The World, … (Boston, 1830), David Walker, Paul Royster , Editor & Depositor

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Walker’s Appeal ... is a radical antislavery and antiracist manifesto by a free American of African ancestry. Its bold denunciation of European culture was unprecedented, unrestrained, and startling, viz.:

“The whites have always been an unjust, jealous, unmerciful, avaricious and blood-thirsty set of beings, always seeking after power and authority.”

Walker attacks the slave system and its rampant racism from the viewpoint of America’s allegiance to the idea of freedom; he quotes the Declaration of Independence at length, and strikes a recognizably jeremiad note:

“O Americans! Americans!! I call God—I call angels— I call men, to witness, that your destruction …

An Oration On The Abolition Of The Slave Trade; Delivered In The African Church In The City Of New-York, January 1, 1808, Peter Williams Jr

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The United States Constitution, Article 1, Section 9, prohibited Congress from banning the importation of slaves until the year 1808. A bill to do this was first introduced in Congress by Senator Stephen Roe Bradley of Vermont in December 1805, and its passage was recommended by President Jefferson in his annual message to Congress in December 1806. In March 1807, Congress passed the legislation, and President Thomas Jefferson signed it into law on March 3, 1807. Subsequently, on March 25, 1807, the British Parliament also passed an act banning the slave trade aboard British ships. The effective date of the …

The Nature And Importance Of True Republicanism With A Few Suggestions Favorable To Independence: A Discourse, Delivered At Rutland, (Vermont,) The Fourth Of July, 1801. — It Being The 25th Anniversary Of American Independence., Lemuel Haynes, Paul Royster , Ed.

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This intriguing document is a political 4th of July “discourse” by an African American New England Congregational ordained minister and Revolutionary War veteran from the very early years of the Republic. Lemuel Haynes’ personal history is an interesting story, as is his assessment of the progress, needs, and future prospects of the new nation. Ostensibly and formally, the discourse is about selecting leadership dedicated to serving the public welfare and avoiding men who seek office for personal preferment, power, or fame. Taking a text from the gospel of Luke, Haynes applies the advice of Jesus to his disciples to the …

An Address To The Negroes In The State Of New-York, Jupiter Hammon

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Hammon’s Address, published in New York and Philadelphia in 1787, is a simple but eloquent set of Christian advice and reflections. To his fellow Negroes who are enslaved, Hammon advises obedience to masters, honesty and faithfulness, and the avoidance of profaneness. Among his strongest recommendations is that Negroes make every effort learn to read and use that knowledge to study the Bible. Hammon’s focus is on eternity, judgment, redemption, and God’s governance of the world.

Yet Hammon’s appeal is no apology for the slave system, but rather a modulated and astute assessment of the social and power relations between blacks …

Liberty Further Extended: Or Free Thoughts On The Illegality Of Slave-Keeping; Wherein Those Arguments That Are Used In Its Vindication Are Plainly Confuted. Together With An Humble Address To Such As Are Concerned In The Practice., Lemuel Haynes, Paul Royster , Ed.

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This is a regularized text of a private sermon or pamphlet manuscript, authored by a 23-year-old African American who had served in the “minuteman” militia and the Continental Army, and who became an ordained minister and was pastor to white Congregational churches for more than 50 years.

Haynes’ tract is an important and revelatory addition to the early anti-slavery literature in the American colonies. Only identified and published in 1983, it is uniquely situated at the crossroads of independence, anti-­slavery, Congregationalism, and African-American identity. Brought to light by Ruth Bogin, the work is testimony to the diversity of thought and …

The Negro Christianized. An Essay To Excite And Assist That Good Work, The Instruction Of Negro-Servants In Christianity (1706), Cotton Mather, Paul Royster , Editor

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There were Africans in New England before there were Puritans there, and by 1700 they numbered about 1,000 out of a total population of 90,000. Roughly half of them lived in Massachusetts, and were concentrated in Boston and the coastal towns. Puritans actively participated in the trafficking of enslaved persons, importing Africans from the West Indies and sometimes selling native American prisoners overseas.

Cotton Mather’s household contained enslaved Negro servants, and his congregation at the Second (or North) Church included both merchants of slavery and persons of African descent. The pamphlet reprinted here appeared in 1706 without his name, but …