Phillis Wheatley
—Chrissie

Listen here: www.spreaker.com/user/bqn1/hwts232

            In the era of American slavery, it was very odd for any slave to be educated, much less an enslaved woman. Even so, the first book of poetry by a Black American woman was written by Phillis Wheatley while she was enslaved.

            She was taken from her African home in 1761, around the age of seven. We cannot be sure about her age, nor do we know her given name, but she was called Phillis by the Wheatley family, who purchased her in Boston that year. “Phillis” was the name of the ship on which she had been taken across the Atlantic.

            We do not know why the Wheatleys chose to educate Phillis. One clue may lie in the reason for her purchase: some sources say she was intended to be a companion to John Wheatley’s wife Suzanna. If this were the case, it may have been so that Phillis could read aloud for the family’s entertainment. Whatever the reason, under the tutelage of John and Suzanna’s daughter Mary, she learned not only English, but Latin and Greek as well. This was a level of education uncommon in a man for the time, much less a woman, and far less an enslaved woman. Her skills were exhibited to guests with readings of Homer, Virgil, and modern philosophers.

            Phillis began writing poetry at the age of 14. She soon gained local fame with a tribute upon the death of George Whitefield, a minister and evangelist who was one of the founders of the Methodist denomination. By 1773, she had compiled a book of poetry, which she sought to publish. A sort of introduction was written and signed by prominent Bostonians, including John Hancock and Thomas Hutchinson, as a “Letter to the Publick” attesting that the young enslaved woman was indeed the author of these poems. She traveled to London with the Wheatley’s son, Nathaniel, and there found patronage from William Legge, the Earl of Dartmouth and Selina, the Countess of Huntington, with which she found a publisher. Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, was first printed in 1773.

            Phillis quickly became well-known amongst Londoners and beyond, and arrangements were made for her to be presented to King George III, though she and Nathaniel had to return to Massachusetts before it could be organized. Many of her readers were vocally concerned about the enslaved status of the author. They cited a recent ruling in Somerset v. Stewart, in which the presiding judge, William Murray, Earl of Mansfield, stated that an enslaved person in England could not forcibly be removed from English soil to be returned to a state of slavery. It’s difficult to imagine Phillis was not aware of the Manfield ruling, and since she writes of having been freed shortly after getting back to Boston, perhaps she used it to her advantage to improve her position when returning home. 

            Her manumission and the beginning of the American Revolution turned her writing toward ideas of freedom. She wrote in praise of George Washington and the efforts of the Americans while also criticizing the continued practice of slavery. Washington responded to her poem with compliments and an invitation to visit him at the headquarters, which she took up. While the general appreciated her work, his Congressional colleague Thomas Jefferson finds her work “below the dignity of criticism.”

            In 1778 or 1779, she married John Peters, a free Black grocer in Boston. They had little money and Peters was imprisoned for debt in 1784, at which point a pregnant Phillis had to take on work as a scullery maid to support herself and their son. She died on 5 December 1784, from pneumonia combined with complications in childbirth.

Read her poetry here, via Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/409/409-h/409-h.htm