Lucy Terry
Lucy Terry Prince (often credited as simply Lucy Terry; c. 1733 – 1821) was an American settler and poet. Kidnapped in Africa and enslaved, she was taken to the British colony of Rhode Island. Her future husband purchased her freedom before their marriage in 1756. She composed a ballad poem, "Bars Fight", about a 1746 incident in which two white families were attacked by Native Americans. It was preserved orally until it was published in 1854. It is considered the oldest known work of literature by an African American.
Quotes
[edit]- Eunice Allen see the Indians comeing
And hoped to save herself by running
And had not her petticoats stopt her
The awful creatures had not cotched her
Nor tommyhawked her on her head
And left her on the ground for dead.- "Bars Fight", l. 21. Lorenzo J. Greene (ed.) The Negro in Colonial New England, 1620–1776 (1942), p. 243
- Written some time after an attack upon two white families by Native Americans on August 21, 1746. Preserved orally by the townsfolk of Deerfield, Massachusetts. First published, with modernized orthography, in The Springfield Daily Republican (November 20, 1854)
