GAIL DRAKE: Phillis Wheatley … not all girls are created equal

About 1½ miles off the African port of Dakar, Senegal, lies Gorée Island, famed for the “House of Slaves” with its dank rooms, chains and the “Door of No Return.” The door frames the final exit point to the long-absent wharf where thousands of kidnapped Africans were loaded onto ships bound for Atlantic colonies, and never came back. Three American presidents, Pope John Paul II and famous dignitaries have toured its halls.

Among the thousands of slaves from Senegal/Gambia was a frail 7-year-old girl, seized by a tribal chieftain and sold to a trader. Due to her age and health she was loaded onto a ship of “refugee” slaves and transported to Boston. Fearing she was terminally ill, the captain sold her “for a trifle” to Susanna Wheatley, wife of a prominent Boston tailor, in August 1761. The nearly naked girl “of slender frame” was named after the slave ship “Phillis” and given the surname of her new owners.

Little Phillis proved to be so bright and precocious that the Wheatleys began to teach her to read and write. At age 12 she was immersed in learning the Bible, Greek, Latin, history and astronomy. She reveled in literary writings including those penned by John Milton, Alexander Pope and Homer. Her education was an anomaly for both slaves and females.

At age 13, she wrote and published her first poem, “On Messrs. Hussey and Coffin” about a miraculous survival at sea. But it was her published elegy of famed evangelist George Whitefield that brought her renown. Whitefield’s revival meetings across the colonies were a part of the “Great Awakening” movement that persuaded thousands of congregants from various denominations of their need for a “new birth” through faith in Christ.

In 1772 Mrs. Wheatly helped Phillis advertise for subscribers for her collection of 28 poems that were laced with Biblical imagery and classical techniques. With colonists disinterested in supporting literature written by a slave, Mrs. Wheatley then sent Phillis’s works to England’s Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon, a wealthy supporter of evangelical and abolition causes. Mrs. Wheatley sent Phillis to London along with her son, Nathaniel, to treat her chronic asthma and introduce her to a welcoming London audience, including the future Lord Mayor of London. In 1773, bookseller Archibald Bell published her first edition of “Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral,” with a preface signed by 17 prominent Boston businessmen. Many of her poems are elegies on the death of noted persons, others promoted her Christian faith or celebrated America. The poem she is best known for, “On Being Brought from Africa to America”:

“‘Twas mercy brought me from my pagan land, /Taught my benighted soul to understand/That there’s a God, that there’s a Savior too/Once I redemption neither sought nor knew./Some view our sable race with scornful eye,/“Their colour is a diabolical die.”/Remember, Christians, negroes black as Cain/May be refin’d and join th’angelic train.”

Phillis was emancipated and a few months later Mrs. Wheatley died, followed by John Wheatley and their adult children. With the ravages of the ongoing Revolutionary War, there was no longer a colonial audience nor a British benefactor for her work. Phillis married free black man John Peters, a grocer with minimal business skills. The harsh economic conditions of wartime brought her husband into debt, and abandoned Phillis was forced to work as a scullery maid in a boarding house, work she had not experienced. Her three children died in infancy, and she died in poverty in 1784.

Scholars believe Wheatley penned perhaps 145 poems. She was lionized in England, a household name in New England, and known by prominent colonial leaders George Washington, John Hancock and Benjamin Franklin among others. She is celebrated as the first published African American female poet, whose achievements fanned the sparks of the abolitionist movement.

Yes, not all girls are created equal. Some are exceptional..