Join us at Joseph Lloyd Manor to celebrate Black Poetry Day and Jupiter Hammon’s 314th Birthday, with a presentation by professor and author James G. Basker: The Black Presence in the Founding Era
Date: Saturday, October 18th
Time: 3:00-5:00 PM
Location: Joseph Lloyd Manor (1 Lloyd Lane, Lloyd Harbor)
Tickets: Free for PLI Members | $10 Non-Members
Black Poetry Day is observed each year on the birthday of Jupiter Hammon, America’s first published Black poet. Enslaved by the Lloyd family, Hammon lived and wrote at Joseph Lloyd Manor, where he composed some of his most significant works on the moral conflicts of slavery and freedom in the early United States. In 2020, the site was designated a National Literary Landmark in his honor.
Drawing on the hundreds of lives represented in his recent book Black Writers of the Founding Era (Library of America, 2023), Professor Basker will talk about the rich variety of life stories and contributions to the American founding made by such people as Jupiter Hammon, Lemuel Haynes, Phillis Wheatley, James Forten, Benjamin Banneker, and many others whose names were almost lost to history.
Joseph Lloyd Manor will open at 3:00 PM for self-guided tours and light refreshments. Professor Basker’s talk will begin at 4:00 PM.
James G. Basker is president and CEO of the Gilder Lehrman Institute and Richard Gilder Professor of Literary History at Barnard College, Columbia University. As president of Gilder Lehrman since 1997, Basker has overseen the development of major history education initiatives, including a national network of affiliate schools, teacher seminars, traveling exhibitions, digital archives, the Hamilton Education Program, and the National History Teacher of the Year Award. He is an elected member of the Society of American Historians, a former fellow of the American Antiquarian Society, and a former trustee of the New-York Historical Society. He serves on the boards of the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize and the Frederick Douglass Book Prize, the Board of Marymount School, and the Board of the Association of American Rhodes Scholars.
Basker was educated at Harvard, Cambridge, and Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He taught at Harvard University before coming to Barnard College in 1987. For many years, he has also led academic programs for high school students at Oxford University, most recently as academic director for “Oxford Academia,” based at University College.His other publications include Amazing Grace: An Anthology of Poems about Slavery, 1660–1810 (2002), Early American Abolitionists (2005), American Antislavery Writings: Colonial Beginnings to Emancipation (2012), and The Witnesses: Fifty Historic Anti-Slavery Poems, 1695–1865 (2024).
