The LIT History Series is for the Legends, Innovators and Trailblazers that have shaped our culture. I love history, and in turn, I love black history. So much of our culture has been defined by those who’ve come before us, so I write this to capture and chronicle our narratives.
Unfortunately, like many other Black artists, scientists, and notable figures, I never knew about Phillis Wheatley, America’s first Black published poet, until I got to college.
Though once I found out about her, I was blown away.
Phillis Wheatley was born in West Africa in 1753 and sold into slavery at the age of seven to the wealthy Wheatley family of Boston. They named her Phillis after the slave ship that brought her to America. John Wheatley purchased Phillis as a household servant for his wife and the couple’s young children taught her to read and write. She was soon immersed in the Bible, astronomy, geography, history, British literature and the Greek and Latin classics.
Wheatley wrote her first poem around age fourteen and had composed a collection of 28 poems by the age of eighteen. With the help of her mistress Mrs. Wheatley, she ran advertisements in Boston newspapers in February 1772. However, the colonists would not support literature from an African slave. She and the Wheatleys then decided to seek publishing in London and received support from wealthy abolitionists to prepare for her book.
Her book, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, was the first book written by a black woman in America and the second one to be written by any woman.
Here’s the letter John Wheatley wrote on her behalf.
And here’s an excerpt from her one of her poems, On Imagination:
Imagination! who can sing thy force?
Or who describe the swiftness of thy course?
Soaring through air to find the bright abode,
Th’ empyreal palace of the thund’ring God,
We on thy pinions can surpass the wind,
And leave the rolling universe behind:
From star to star the mental optics rove,
Measure the skies, and range the realms above.
There in one view we grasp the mighty whole,
Or with new worlds amaze th’ unbounded soul.
You can read the full text here.
Because of her contributions, she has a statue in her honor at the Boston Women’s Memorial.
Phillis Wheatley is the mother of black literature. Her classical style and ability to weave themes of racism, sexism, and slavery in her work served as proof of the humanity, equality, and literary talents of people of African descent.
Wheatley and her contemporaries, such as Jupiter Hammon, helped pave the way, and we haven’t stopped since then.
