Bars Fight

"Bars Fight" is a ballad poem written by Lucy Terry about an attack upon two white families by Native Americans on August 21, 1746. The incident occurred in an area of Deerfield, Massachusetts called "The Bars", which was a colonial term for a meadow.[1] The poem was preserved orally and not published until 1855, in Josiah Gilbert Holland's History of Western Massachusetts.[2][3]

It is believed to be the oldest known work of literature by an African American[2][4] and is the only known work by Lucy Terry.

  1. ^ Vincent Carretta, ed. (2001). Phillis Wheatley, Complete Writings. New York: Penguin. p. 199. ISBN 9780140424300.
  2. ^ a b Margaret Busby, Daughters of Africa, London: Jonathan Cape, 1992, p. 16–17.
  3. ^ Holland, Josiah Gilbert (1855). History of Western Massachusetts: The Counties of Hampden, Hampshire, Franklin, and Berkshire. Embracing an Outline Aspects and Leading Interests, and Separate Histories of Its One Hundred Towns. Vol. II. Springfield, MA: Samuel Bowles and Co. p. 360.
  4. ^ Gates, Henry Louis; Nellie Y. McKay (2003). The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. p. 186. ISBN 9780393977783.