TheMinorityWE History Spot:Lucy Terry

1746- Lucy Terry (c.1730-1821), a slave and orator, was the first black American poet. "Bars Fight," written this year (her only known poem), was inspired by an Indian ambush of haymakers in the Bars, a small plateau near Deerfield Massachusetts. It was not published until 1855, in Josiah Gilbert Holland's History of Western Masschusetts. Terry was kidnapped as an infant in Africa brought to Rhode Island. In 1756 Terry married Abijah Prince and obtained her freedom. She is also noted for her determined, if unsuccessful, attempt to persuade Williams College to accept her son as a student- she is reported to have argued before the board of trustees for three hours.
Sources: Jackson, A History of Afro-American Literature, vol.1, pp.29-33; Smith, Notable Black American Women, pp.881-82;Shockley, Afro American Women Writers 1746-1933, p.13.

Lucy Terry