George Moses Horton
George Moses Horton (1798–after 1867), was an African-American poet from North Carolina who was enslaved. Horton is the first African-American author to be published after the United States gained independence. His first collection, "The Hope of Liberty" (1829), was intended to earn enough to purchase his freedom, but failed to do so. He did not become free until 1865, when Union troops and the Emancipation Proclamation reached North Carolina.
Horton "firsts":
The first African American to publish a book in the United States.
The first published North Carolina author of literature.
The first enslaved American to publish a book.
The "first American slave to protest his bondage in verse; the first African American to publish a book in the South; the only slave to earn a significant income by selling his poems; the only poet of any race to produce a book of poems before he could write; and the only slave to publish two volumes of poetry while in bondage and another shortly after emancipation."
SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Moses_Horton