George Moses Horton, was an African-American poet from North Carolina who was enslaved until Union troops, carrying the Emancipation Proclamation, reached North Carolina (1865). Horton is the first African-American author to be published in the United States. He is author of the first book of literature published in North Carolina and was known as the "Slave Poet".
Title page to Poetical Works of George M. Horton (1845)
Image: Georgemoseshortonplaque
Phillis Wheatley Peters, also spelled Phyllis and Wheatly was an American author who is considered the first African-American author of a published book of poetry. Born in West Africa, she was kidnapped and subsequently sold into slavery at the age of seven or eight and transported to North America, where she was bought by the Wheatley family of Boston. After she learned to read and write, they encouraged her poetry when they saw her talent.
Portrait of Phillis Wheatley, attributed by some scholars to Scipio Moorhead
Phillis Wheatley
Phillis Wheatley's church, Old South Meeting House
Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, 1773