Most scholars have been combing through the Lloyd family papers with regard to researching Jupiter Hammons’s work, but our discovery of “Essay on Slavery,” an unpublished poem written by Hammon and found in archives of the Hillhouse family papers, shows there are other viable sources for understanding Hammon’s life and work. – Cedrick May, Beinecke Library, Feb. 21
Cedrick May received his Ph.D. in English from Penn State University and is an Associate Professor of English at The University of Texas at Arlington. Dr. May does research on a broad range of topics, specializing in early African-American literature written prior to 1840. He is the author of Evangelism and Resistance in the Black Atlantic, 1760-1835 (U. of Georgia 2008), as well as several articles on African-American literature and the Digital Humanities. Dr. May is currently at work on a book about the eighteenth-century African-American poet and slave, Jupiter Hammon.
Evangelism and Resistance in the Black Atlantic, 1760-1835
o-sponsored by the Departments of English and African American Studies