Jupiter Hammon
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF JUPITER HAMMON
The purpose of this paper is to introduce, discuss, and compare the Black poet Jupiter Hammon. Specifically, it will discuss the significance of Jupiter Hammon and his work.
JUPITER HAMMON
Jupiter Hammon was born a slave, sometime around 1720 (now thought to be around 1711). His owners were the Lloyd family who lived on Long Island, New York. While there is no record of his education, clearly the family helped him learn to read and write, and they trusted him with their most private information, including letting him handle some of their finances. It seems he may have been born around the same time as a Lloyd son, and may have been educated with him. "He was a dutiful and trusted servant, so highly esteemed by the members of the Lloyd family in his later years that they helped him to place his verses before the public" (Brawley).
He wrote several poems and later, after his death, they were complied into books of poetry that are still in print today. Hammon wrote consistently about religion, but he also wrote about slavery, and his feeling all slaves should be freed from bondage. While Hammon never gained his freedom, his master did instruct in his will that some of his slaves should be freed when they reached 28 years old, so he did influence his master concerning the issue of his own slaves.
Some of his most important selected works include "This was an Evening of Thought," his first poem published, "An Essay on the Ten Virgins," written in 1779, and "A Winter Piece," written after he moved to Connecticut, in 1782, and "An Evening's Improvement," written near the end of the Revolutionary War. Included in this booklet was an ode to his master, "The Kind Master and Dutiful Servant." His most important non-poetic work is "An Address to the Negroes in the State of New-York," which was published in 1787. He first presented it in a speech "to the members of the African Society in the City of New York on Sept. 24, 1786 [...] The address shows Hammon as feeling it his duty to bear slavery with patience but as strongly disapproving of the system and urging that young slaves be manumitted" (Brawley).
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