Born: Circa 1753, Gambia, West Africa

Education: Taught by the Wheatley family

Died: December 5, 1784, Boston, MA

The first African woman and second American woman to publish a book, Wheatley rose to literary distinction. Born in the Gambia River region of West Africa and a member of the Fulani tribe, she was probably Muslim. Seized and shipped to America on the slaver Phillis, she was about eight when Boston merchant John Wheatley bought her (1761). Too frail for housework, she evinced aptitude to learn. So, using the Bible, English and Latin books, the family taught her to read and write. She accepted Christianity and baptism (1771), began writing letters and poems, and worshiped at the Old South Boston Meeting House, whose minister tutored her in the classics.

Freedom inspired Wheatley's works. Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773) sang that “new worlds amaze th’ unbounded soul.” Public praise for Poems and the author led John Wheatley to free her. “In every human Breast, God has implanted a principle, which we call Love of Freedom; it is impatient of Oppression, and pants for Deliverance,” Wheatley testified. She married black freeman John Peters in 1778, but they were very poor and she eventually died in childbirth. Her poetry paved the way for “the founding of African American literature” (Gates and McKay, 1997, p. 167).