Phillis Wheatley: A Dime Who Knew How to Rhyme

February 4, 2018

Phillis Wheatley was born in West Africa around 1753. She was living her life and minding her own business when she was snatched from her home (along with a bunch of other black folk) and was thrown onto a slave ship. She was transported to Boston, Massachusetts where she was purchased to be the “personal servant” (which is what the internet said, so read: HOUSE SLAVE) to some melanin-deficient man’s wife.

Surprising, the whip cracking slave owners and their dusty children taught Phillis theology, Latin, Greek, and English. She masted Latin and Greek and in 1767, published her first poem about two men nearly drowning at sea! She then put out her first volume of poems in 1773, “Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral,” which she received financial backing and support for from Selina Hastings, the Countess of Huntingdon, England. *YAS QUEEN!* 17 different ivory men from Boston also asserted that Phillis Wheatley did indeed write the contents in the book of poetry so no one could try to discredit her work. (Look at these slave masters pretending to be allies even though they were buying and selling other human beings like chattel and therefore still aren’t good people, because doing this for Phillis was literally the bare minimum and what they should have done for anyone, but I digress.)

She continued to write poems and had written several in honor of George Washington. She sent one to him that she had written sometime in 1775 and he, in return, invited her to visit him in Cambridge in March 1776.

Phillis traveled to London afterwards, publicizing her poems and also receiving medical treatment because of sickness. But finally, she returned to Boston. (She was also free by now, her oppressors wanted her to go out and make a life for herself because they definitely recognized how smart she was and couldn’t deny that she was gifted.)

While Phillis was saddened that the Wheatley’s had passed, the wife in 1774 and husband in 1778, she found happiness once more when she married John Peters, a free Black man from Boston.

Phillis gave birth 3 times, but sadly, none of them lived past infancy. Her marriage was also a struggle as they lived in poverty. She was forced to work in a boarding house as a maid and there she lived in shabby, terrifying circumstances.

Phillis tried to continue writing and publishing her poems, but the world was growing tense as relations with Britain heightened and the Revolutionary War began. Interest for her poems was gone and she was unfortunately never able to find another published to support her second volume of poetry.

Phillis Wheatley passed away in Boston on December 5, 1784 while in her early 30s. Her “Poems on Various Subjects” was and is a landmark achievement in U.S. history. With its publication, she became both the first African American and first U.S. slave to publish a book of poems, as well as only the third American woman to do so.