Not a Man, and Yet a Man: Mint Editions

A.A. Whitman (1851-1901) was an African American poet and minister. Born into slavery in Kentucky, Whitman was freed after the Emancipation Proclamation and worked for years as a laborer and teacher. He studied under Bishop Daniel Payne at Wilberforce University in 1870 before becoming a financial agent for the institution and a pastor in Springfield, Ohio. With his wife Caddie, he raised four daughters who eventually formed The Whitman Sisters, a famous vaudeville troupe that toured for over forty years beginning in 1900. In 1877, he published his debut collection Not a Man, and Yet a Man, which earned him a reputation as a leading African American poet in the tradition of Phillis Wheatley and Jupiter Hammon. Throughout his career, he published three collections of poems, including An Idyl of the South: An Epic Poem in Two Parts (1901), which appeared shortly before his death from pneumonia in 1901.