Oldest Known African American Poem Bars Fight Acrylic Print

This wall print has a poem (the oldest known work of literature by an African American) by Lucy Terry Prince (c. 1730 - 1821) titled Bars Fight. It's about an incident that occurred on August 25, 1746 in the meadows south of the town of Deerfield, Massachusetts (called the Bars). On this day, a party of Indians attacked a group of people gathering hay. Some of the men and a boy were killed, one girl was severely wounded in the head and left for dead, and one boy was taken captive to Canada. Lucy Terry was born in Africa, abducted and sold into slavery in Rhode Island as an infant, and later married a successful free black man named Abijah Prince in 1756. The two settled in Vermont in 1764 where all six of their children were born. This is her only surviving poem.