Hammon, Jupiter (1711-?), was one of the earliest published African American authors. Hammon, who was born into slavery, was a poet and a devout Christian preacher. His poems and prose works were strongly inspired by Protestant Christian thought. Some of his work also expressed mild criticism of slavery.
One of Hammon’s religious poems, “An Evening Thought: Salvation by Christ with Penetential Cries,” is the earliest known writing by an African American to be published in what is now the United States. It was published as a large individual printed page called a broadside. The page says Hammon wrote the poem on Christmas Day in 1760, although the broadside was probably printed in early 1761.
Hammon was born on Oct. 17, 1711. Both of his parents were enslaved. Hammon was enslaved by the Lloyd family of Long Island, New York. He received an education—unusual for enslaved individuals—and may have served the Lloyd family as a clerk and bookkeeper. During the Great Awakening, a Protestant religious movement of the 1730’s and 1740’s, Hammon became an evangelical Christian. Much of his writing was concerned with religious salvation. Even when he questioned the institution of slavery, Hammon still encouraged enslaved people to concentrate their energy on their spiritual development rather than earthly reform.
Hammon’s best known prose work is the speech “An Address to the Negroes in the State of New York.” It was delivered on Sept. 24, 1786, to the African Society of New York City and first printed in 1787. The speech was Hammon’s most direct focus on slavery. He stated that although he personally had no wish to be free, he “should be glad” if others, especially “the young Negroes,” could be free. Hammon said: “If we should ever get to Heaven, we shall find nobody to reproach us for being Black, or for being slaves.”
Perhaps Hammon’s greatest poem is “A Dialogue, Entitled, the Kind Master and the Dutiful Servant” (1783). In it, he stresses that before God, only sin divides humanity.
There is no record of Hammon’s death. He died some time between 1790 and 1806. Hammon was forgotten as a writer for about 100 years before he was rediscovered by the literary critic Oscar Wegelin in the early 1900’s. In 1915, Wegelin published the first biographical information about Hammon, as well as some of his poetry.
