George Moses Horton

George Moses Horton (c. 1798–after 1867), was an African-American poet from North Carolina who was enslaved until Union troops, carrying the Emancipation Proclamation, reached North Carolina (1865). Horton is the first African-American author to be published in the United States. (Phillis Wheatley's poetry was published earlier, in the United Kingdom.) He is author of the first book of literature published in North Carolina and was known as the "Slave Poet".

Horton began an interest in learning to read and write by listening to the Bible read aloud and the hymns he heard. He learned to read and write based on what he was hearing during revival meetings (which were mainly the Bible), calling them his "reading lessons." Horton began compiling pieces based on the verses that he remembered from the King James Version of the Bible.

Around 1817, Horton began making the approximately 10 mile (16 km) trip north to Chapel Hill in order to sell fruits and farm products for his master. Here, Horton took his ability for composing to write love poems for the University of North Carolina students, selling them for 25 cents or more. *

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Moses_Horton

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