Lucy Terry and William Wells Brown are significant figures in African American literature because of the realistic approaches they used to describe their lives in America. Lucy Terry’s poem, “Bars Fight” was most likely supposed to be a song due to its rhyming couplets (Gates and Smith 110). Terry witnessed an Indian ambush of two white families, which inspired her to write this poem to describe the horrific event she saw (Gates and Smith 111). In her poem, she “conveys genuine sympathy for the white men and women who died in the fight” even though she grew up as a slave (Gates and Smith 111). Terry uses the full names of the Americans to honor them for their heroic actions. Terry writes, “Was shot and killed immediately.” and “Adonijah Gillett,
