SOURCE: “Prodigy at the University,” in The Black Poet, Philosophical Library, 1966, pp. 18-51.

In the following essay, from the first and only biography of Horton, Walser details Horton's years as a poet-for-hire among the students at the University of North Carolina.

When he was nineteen or twenty, George Moses began his regular visits to Chapel Hill, seat of the University of North Carolina then only a quarter of a century old. He had heard that the young students cared for poetry as did he, and he was secretly eager to form their acquaintance. Though not apprised of the real reasons, James Horton was agreeable to his request to go there, provided the trips were made on free time and he would take along plantation products to sell.

For the next fifty years, Chapel Hill was to George Moses a place where he caroused in poetry and notoriety, delighting...