James Monroe Whitfield

James Monroe Whitfield’s poetry embodies bitterness and anger about slavery and the limited opportunities for African Americans following the Civil War. A writer and activist born to free blacks in New Hampshire, Whitfield began publishing writing in support of African American rights by age 16.

An ardent abolitionist poet, Whitfield worked as a barber to support his writing but desired a more intellectually engaging position during a time when few options existed for free African Americans. However, Whitfield rose to prominence as a poet and social critic, publishing poems in The Liberator and two publications by Frederick Douglass, The North Star and Frederick Douglass’ Paper.

Whitfield lived and worked in Buffalo and in the Pacific Northwest. He published numerous poems and letters in San Francisco newspapers supporting African American civil rights and citizenship. Upon his death in San Francisco, Whitfield was buried in San Francisco’s Masonic Cemetery.

Whitfield’s collections include Poems (1846) and America and Other Poems (1853), which he dedicated to activist Martin Delany. Whitfield and Delany supported African American colonization in Central and South America—an idea Whitfield disavowed during the Civil War. Whitfield’s verse is notable for its metrical control, classical imagery, and historical scope. Often bitter, he denounces oppression, the moral corruption of church and state, and the effects of racism on African Americans.