George Moses Horton

George Moses Horton (1798–1884) was an African-American poet and the first African American poet to be published in the Southern United States. His book was published in 1828 while he was still enslaved; he remained enslaved until he was emancipated late in the Civil War.

Horton’s published works include; The Hope of Liberty (1829), Poems by a Slave (1837), The Poetical Works of George M. Horton (1845), and Naked Genius (1865, with William H. S. Banks). In 2015 Don Tate wrote and illustrated a children’s book about Horton’s life, Poet: The Remarkable Story of George Moses