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"Bars Fight" was the first poem composed by an African American woman -- Lucy Terry Prince. When she was 22, two neighboring families were killed in an Indian attack in a section of Deerfield, Massachusetts called "the Bars," a colonial term for meadows. She later wrote a ballad called "Bars Fight" that was recited or sung for a century before it was first published in 1855. Such "captivity narratives" were popular during the colonial period, and an alternate version of "Bars Fight" was still recalled near the end of the 19th century.
Lucy Terry Prince
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