Births on October 17

Jupiter Hammon, American poet (d. 1806)

Jupiter Hammon (October 17, 1711 – ca. 1806) was an American writer who is known as a founder of African-American literature, as his poem published in 1761 in New York was the first by an African American in North America. He published both poetry and prose after that. In addition, he was a preacher and a commercial clerk on Long Island, New York.

Born into slavery at the Lloyd Manor on Long Island, Hammon learned to read and write. In 1761, at the age of nearly 50, Hammon published his first poem, "An Evening Thought: Salvation by Christ with Penitential Cries." He was the first African-American poet published in North America. Also a well-known and well-respected preacher and clerk-bookkeeper, he gained wide circulation of his poems about slavery. As a devoted Christian evangelist, Hammon used his biblical foundation to criticize the institution of slavery.