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Amazing Facts About Foundational Black Americans
September 1, 1773 — Boston, Massachusetts; London, England
Tap the poster to enlarge · Canonical BHED artwork
Did you know an enslaved West African girl in Boston became the first African American to publish a book—and the leading white men of Boston had to interrogate her in person to convince themselves a Black person could have written it?
Phillis Wheatley was kidnapped in West Africa as a child and enslaved in the Boston household of the Wheatley family, who taught her to read and write English, Latin, and Greek.
In 1772, proposals to print her poems in Boston failed because local whites refused to believe an enslaved Black girl could write such verse. A panel of eighteen of the colony's leading white men—including John Hancock—formally examined her and signed an attestation of her authorship, printed in the front of her book.
On September 1, 1773, Phillis Wheatley's Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral was published in London—the first book of poetry by an African American.
Her volume reframed the Enlightenment-era debate over whether Black people possessed reason and imagination. She was emancipated by the Wheatleys shortly after publication.
Phillis Wheatley was kidnapped in West Africa as a child and enslaved in the Boston household of the Wheatley family in 1761. The Wheatleys educated her and she began writing poetry as an adolescent. After white Boston refused to believe she could write her own verse, a panel of eighteen leading men examined her and signed an attestation of her authorship. In 1773 her Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral was published in London—the first book of poetry by an African American. She was emancipated shortly after. She later married John Peters, struggled financially, and died in poverty in 1784.
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