The Dying Negro

The Dying Negro: A Poetical Epistle was a 1773 abolitionist poem published in England, by John Bicknell and Thomas Day.

It has been called "the first significant piece of verse propaganda directed explicitly against the English slave systems".

[8] The 1772 English legal decision in Somerset v Stewart had been widely interpreted as a ruling abolishing slavery in England, and the implication of what had occurred to the servant was a reaction to an illegal deportation.

Day expanded Bicknell's draft, added footnote material on Africa, and played up the "nobleness" of the African depicted in the story.

[9] The poem ends on a note suggesting future African vengeance.