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Department of English
Cedrick May
Spring 2013 · Comment ·
Call them literary sleuths. Associate Professor Cedrick May and graduate student Julie McCown recently discovered a never-before-published manuscript from one of the founders of early African-American literature. The handwritten poem by Jupiter Hammon, an 18th-century slave, called An Essay on Slavery had been boxed away in the Yale University Library archives. Dating from 1786, the work represents a major shift in the ideology that Hammon publicly advocated during his lifetime and seems to show his internal conflict over whether slavery was 鈥淕od鈥檚 will鈥� or a 鈥渄ark and dismal鈥� manmade state. Literary experts say the discovery is important because it voices a strong, direct critique of slavery and expands the few known works by enslaved African-Americans in the 1700s. 鈥淚nitially, I thought this was either an incredibly elaborate hoax or a title put on something that Hammon had written earlier,鈥� Dr. May says. 鈥淏ut that was not the case.鈥� The research and the poem itself will be published in the June 2013 edition of the journal Early American Literature.