Phillis Wheatley

Phillis Wheatley was the first Black person to publish a book in America — Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, published in London in 1773 — and only the third American woman to do so. She accomplished this while enslaved, in a language she had only begun learning at age seven when she was kidnapped from West Africa. Her very existence as a published poet was so incomprehensible to white Americans that she was subjected to an examination by 18 of Boston's most prominent men — including John Hancock — who had to certify that a Black woman was indeed capable of writing poetry.

Born in West Africa around 1753 (likely in present-day Senegal or Gambia), Wheatley was kidnapped and sold into slavery at approximately age seven. She was purchased by the Wheatley family of Boston, who recognized her intelligence and taught her to read and write — an extraordinary exception in an era when literacy among enslaved people was actively suppressed. She was reading Latin, Greek, and English literature by her teens.

Wheatley's poetry was accomplished and sophisticated, drawing on classical mythology and Christian theology. She corresponded with George Washington, who praised her talents. Despite her literary achievements, she was freed only upon the death of her enslaver and spent her final years in poverty. She joined the ancestors at approximately 31 years old, in 1784. Her book — published before the Declaration of Independence — remains one of the most remarkable achievements in American literary history.