Jupiter Hammon, the first American of African descent to publish poetry and prose in the Western world, was born a slave at the aristocratic Lloyd Manor in Oyster Bay, Long Island, New York, on 17 October 1711. His life spanned the eighteenth century, and his work was forged through arduous indigenous education and set forth in the midst of a classed and autocratic America, which, although teeming with change, still placed the Black slave on the lowest socioeconomic rung and allowed him no opportunity for advancement. A slave's access to education was only tolerated, even on Northern plantations, when literacy would serve the master in some way. Publication was impossible without the master's permission and without broad support from the white community, including authentication of the slave's authorship. Further, colonists greatly resisted any community network among slaves, especially one that extended beyond the borders of local hamlets. Yet Hammon met...