Celebrate Black History 2021 - Phillis Wheatley

by Dick Mac

Phillis Wheatley was born a free woman c.1753, somewhere in West Africa, and died of unknown causes on December 5, 1784, in Boston, Massachusetts. She was 31.

Phillis Wheatley was purchased by slave traders in West Africa, and enslaved by John Wheatley and his wife as a servant, in Boston. Unlike most enslaved Africans, she learned to read and write, and her captors encouraged her talent for poetry.  In 1773 she travelled with her captors to London to find a publisher for her work.  Her "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral" was published that year, received with enthusiasm and brought her fame (and money) in both England and the Colonies. Wheatley was emancipated after the publication of her book. 

Hers is an unusual story, because her captors educated her and she became fluent in Greek and Latin by the time she was a teenager. Her skills were recognized by the Wheatley's and she was relieved of her household duties so she could write. During the time she was with the Wheatleys, she enjoyed the attention of patrons and benefactors, but shortly after her freedom, all support stopped, she married, lost two children at birth, became impoverished when her husband was sent to debtor's prison, worked as a maid, and died in 1784. Her third, surviving infant child died shortly thereafter.

The years of her success were not easy. Colonists refused to believe that an African could write poetry and she was required to defend her work in court. Her testimony resulted in a finding by her judges, including John Hancock, that she had indeed composed her work. That attestation was included in the preface of her book.

There is much controversy about her legacy, but none of the criticisms and critiques of her history diminish the fact that she was the first African-American woman to publish a book of poetry and earn payment for her literary work.

Her poem "A Hymn to the Evening" is posted here here, without permission:

Soon as the sun forsook the eastern main

The pealing thunder shook the heav'nly plain;

Majestic grandeur! From the zephyr's wing,

Exhales the incense of the blooming spring.

Soft purl the streams, the birds renew their notes,

And through the air their mingled music floats.

Through all the heav'ns what beauteous dies are spread!

But the west glories in the deepest red:

So may our breasts with ev'ry virtue glow,

The living temples of our God below!

Fill'd with the praise of him who gives the light,

And draws the sable curtains of the night,

Let placid slumbers sooth each weary mind,

At morn to wake more heav'nly, more refin'd;

So shall the labours of the day begin

More pure, more guarded from the snares of sin.

Night's leaden sceptre seals my drowsy eyes,

Then cease, my song, till fair Aurora rise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillis_Wheatley

The Poetry Foundation includes some of her work here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/phillis-wheatley

Phillis Wheatley is commemorated along with Abigail Adams and Lucy Stone in the Boston Women's Memorial: https://www.boston.gov/departments/womens-advancement/boston-womens-memorial

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