Black History Month Spotlight: Phillis Wheatley

Wheatley had been kidnapped from West Africa and enslaved in Boston as a child. She was purchased by John Wheatley as a personal servant to his wife. While with the Wheatleys they quickly noticed her intelligence and she began to receive lessons from John’s wife Susanna. Wheatley mastered various subjects such as theology, ancient history, Greek, and Latin during a time when African Americans were discouraged from learning to read and write. She published her first poem in 1767 and her first volume Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral in 1773. Wheatley became the first African American and one of the first women to publish a book of poetry in the colonies.