01:00 AM EST on Tuesday, February 1, 2005

BY BRYAN ROURKE
Journal staff writer

The first African-American to publish a poem and speak before the U.S. Supreme Court was once a Rhode Islander. Granted, she didn't choose to live here, or remain here long, but that's beside the point.

Lucy Terry, an African-born slave, came to Rhode Island as an infant around 1730, most likely arriving in Newport, where most slaves entered the state. There, she was sold to the Terry family, who named her and took her to their home in Enfield, Conn. At the age of 5, she was sold to Ebenezer Wells of Deerfield, Mass., who presumably taught her how to read and write.

In 1746, at the age of 16, Lucy Terry composed a poem called "Bar's Flight." The 28-line, irregular iambic tetrameter verse commemorates several white residents killed in a Native American raid on Deerfield that year.

Lucy Terry, a storyteller and orator, wrote none of her poems down. "Bar's Flight" survived by oral tradition for more than a century, until someone wrote it from memory, and submitted it to Josiah Holland, who included it in his 1855 book History of Western Massachusetts.

In 1756, Terry married Abijah Prince, a wealthy and free black man who bought her freedom. They moved to Guilford, Vt., where they had six children, and at least one son who fought in the Revolutionary War.

Lucy Terry Prince argued unsuccessfully to convince Williams College to accept one of her sons for admission, in spite of his skin color. However, in the 1790s, Terry Prince did inadvertently argue before the Supreme Court. A neighbor of hers in Vermont was trying to claim part of her land as his. Feeling dissatisfied with how her lawyer was performing, Terry Prince represented herself, and won.

She died in 1821, at the age of 91.