George Moses Horton

George Moses Horton was born into slavery on a North Carolina tobacco plantation, likely in 1798. As a child, he was enslaved on a farm in Chatham County, where he taught himself to read and began composing poetry.

In 1815, Horton was enslaved by a different man, who sent him on frequent trips to Chapel Hill. There, Horton met students from the University of North Carolina; these students encouraged him to pursue poetry, donated books for his education, and occasionally commissioned poems from him. Although Horton could not write, he composed poems in his head while being forced to plow fields and later dictated them to others.

Horton worked closely with a professor’s wife, Caroline Lee Hentz, who tutored him in grammar and helped him secure publication in small newspapers. In 1829, Horton published his first book, The Hope of Liberty (J. Gales & Sons), which he hoped would earn him enough income to purchase his freedom. While this was not the case, with this collection Horton became the first Black author in the South to publish a book, as well as the only American to publish a book while being enslaved.

Horton went on to publish two more volumes of poetry, Poetical Works (D. Heartt, 1845) and Naked Genius (William B. Smith, 1865), which he composed after leaving his enslaver’s farm and joining the Union army in 1865. After the Civil War, Horton moved to Philadelphia, where he continued writing. The details of his death are unknown. Horton was posthumously declared “Historic Poet Laureate” of Chatham County in 1997. In 1999, North Carolina placed a historic marker, the first in the state for an African American, near the farm where Horton lived.