On September 1, 1773, at the tender age of 20, an enslaved woman named Phillis Wheatley published a collection of poetry entitled Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral; she was the first Black American—and only the second American woman—to do so.
“She was a literary genius,” writes Kyle T. Mays.
Within the context of enslavement and gender discrimination, people like Wheatley were hardly able to utilize all of their gifts and reach the apex of their creative genius. Slave traders captured her and transported her across the Atlantic. She was purchased by John Wheatley to be a servant to his wife, Susannah. Although the property of John and Susannah’s, she virtually replaced their daughter, who had died at the same age of Wheatley, who was seven at the time. They named her Phillis, after the ship.
“The Wheatleys taught Phillis to read and write in English, Greek, and Latin,” Mays explains. “That she learned to write in another language and spoke it fluently is pure, unadulterated Black Girl Genius.”
Phillis arrived in Boston in 1761; she learned to read from the Wheatley's children, and the Wheatley's encouraged her education. In 1767 she published her first poem in a Rhode Island newspaper. By 1772, Phillis had written 28 poems, and the Wheatleys, recognizing her talent, sought to have them published in a collection—but some critics in Boston questioned whether Phillis could truly have been their author, and held a tribunal to get to the bottom of it.
"If she had indeed written her own poems, then this would demonstrate that Africans were human beings and should be liberated from slavery. If, on the other hand, she had not written, or could not write her poems, or if indeed she was like a parrot who speaks a few words plainly, then that would be another matter entirely," Henry Louis Gates Jr. explained. "Essentially, she was auditioning for the humanity of the entire African people."
One way or another, she convinced them. “With the publication of her book [in 1773], Phillis Wheatley almost immediately became the most famous African on the face of the Earth, the Oprah Winfrey of her time,” Gates said. That same year, John Wheatley manumitted her; three years later, George Washington would receive her at his headquarters in Cambridge. Despite the fact that she tragically died in 1784, at only 31, she is now celebrated as a foundational figure in American poetry. Still, she might have been even more.
“When Wheatley died, she was gravely ill,” writes Mays. “Perhaps she never really reached her true potential. Wheatley was not only an African genius, but an Indigenous genius who, because of enslavement, was never able to really delve into the meaning of what it meant to be an Indigenous person in her poetry. It makes me wonder, what if she could remember her homeland, her customs and traditions? How would that have impacted her poetry? We will never know.”
