Lucy Terry

Lucy Terry (c.1730-1821) is the author of the oldest known work of literature by an African American. Terry was kidnapped from Africa and sold into slavery as an infant. A successful free black man named Obijah Prince purchased her freedom and married her in 1756.

Her work, "Bars Fight", is a ballad about attack upon two white families by Native Americans on August 25, 1746. The attack occurred in Deerfield, Massachusetts in an area called "The Bars," which was a colonial term for a meadow. The poem was preserved orally until it was finally published in 1855.