Black Poetry Month

George Moses Horton

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It is fitting to close my column for Black Poetry Month with Chatham County’s own historic poet laureate, George Moses Horton.

Horton was born into slavery at the turn of the 18th century. Though it was illegal to teach slaves to read and write, he initially learned from hearing the Bible. In his poem, “Myself,” Horton described “my genius from a boy” as “like a restless bird” that desired to “dart from world to world.” He was determined to rise above his situation, and poetry gave him wings.

Horton walked 10 miles to the Chapel Hill farmer’s market where, in addition to selling the produce of the man who legally owned him, Horton would sell poems to students at the University of North Carolina. An undergraduate would give him the name of his romantic interest, and Horton would compose an acrostic, a poem in which the first letter of each line spelled out the woman’s name.

Horton became such a fixture at the farmer’s market that he attracted the literary interest of a benefactor. Caroline Lee Hantz was a novelist and wife of a faculty member at the university. She used her influence to publish Horton’s poems in journals and, eventually, a book. “The Hope of Liberty” made Horton the first slave to publish a book in the South, a feat all the more remarkable because he critiqued slavery: “I scorn to see the sad disgrace / in which enslaved I lie.”

Readers can easily find more details of Horton’s biography online as well as many of his poems. I encourage you to make a trip to George Moses Horton Middle School where you can study the “Path to Freedom.” Created in 2000 in celebration of the bicentennial of Horton’s birth, this mosaic was based on drawings submitted by 5th grade students. The 12 stepping stones evoke the 12 stanzas of Horton’s “On Summer,” featuring aspects of Chatham County rural life like cows, bees and birds. Horton wrote, “See loaded vines with melons team / tis paradise to human sight.”

In February, we think of love poems on Valentine’s Day. Black history reminds us that poetry can inspire lofty ideals like freedom and equality. Horton’s genius still “darts from world to world” inspiring us in the 21st century to work toward a better society. All year long, a few of his verses can also draw our attention to sweetness grounded in the dirt right in front of us.

How sweet to think of a piece of ripe watermelon as a slice of paradise.

Andrew Taylor-Troutman is the pastor of Chapel in the Pines Presbyterian Church. His newly-published book is a collection of his columns for the Chatham News + Record titled “Hope Matters: Churchless Sermons.”