Christ-Honoring and Pioneering Poet
While we know her as Phillis Wheatley, the first African-American published poet remains a mystery to us in many ways. This is because she was kidnapped from her birth family and sold into slavery while still a small child. All we know of her origins is that she was born somewhere in West Africa around the year 1753, then transported to America, where she was purchased by a wealthy Boston couple, John and Susanna Wheatley. They intended for the little girl—around seven at the time—to work as a servant and companion to Mrs. Wheatley.
The Wheatley family named her after the Phillis, the ship on which she had made the Atlantic passage to America. Noticing how rapidly Phillis learned English, the family tutored her in reading and writing. She also attended Old South Meeting House, a Congregational church, alongside the family and showed an interest in Scripture and theology from a young age. Before Phillis was a teenager, she was avidly studying not only the Bible, but ancient Greek and Latin classics and English literature as well. She began experimenting with poetry and published her first poem in a newspaper at age 12. The Wheatleys encouraged Phillis and had a strikingly progressive attitude about education for their time; however, the fact remains that Phillis was enslaved by them until after she reached adulthood.
When the famous evangelist George Whitefield died in 1770, teenaged Phillis published an elegy for him. She had likely heard him preach in Boston just the week before. Reflecting on Whitefield’s ministry she wrote this exhortation about responding to Christ:
“Take him, my dear Americans, he said,
Be your complaints on his kind bosom laid:
Take him, ye Africans, he longs for you,
Impartial Savior is his title due:
Wash’d in the fountain of redeeming blood,
You shall be sons, and kings, and priests to God.”
The elegy’s popularity was the catalyst for Phillis’ first and only published book, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. The volume was published in London, where Phillis gained a number of wealthy patrons and traveled at the age of 20 to help promote her work. Her poems likely reached John Newton, former slave-trader and beloved pastor and hymnist, so it is entirely possible that they influenced Newton’s forceful abolitionism.
Among her writings, there is also a fascinating letter Phillis sent to the Rev. Samson Occom, a Presbyterian missionary and member of the Mohegan tribe. They apparently carried on a correspondence on the subject of slavery. Phillis comments, “…[I]n every human breast, God has implanted a principle, which we call Love of Freedom; it is impatient of oppression, and pants for deliverance.” She adds, “God grant deliverance in his own way and time, and get [himself] honor upon all those whose avarice impels them to countenance and help forward the calamities of their fellow creatures. This I desire not for their hurt, but to convince them of the strange absurdity of their conduct whose words and actions are so diametrically opposite.”
Phillis was emancipated after the publication of her book. However, her later years were marked by hardship and grief. She sought to publish another book, but the colonies were embroiled in Revolution by this time, which made it difficult to find willing patrons. She married John Peters, a free African-American who worked as a grocer, in her mid-20s. They had three children together, but none of their babies survived infancy. The couple struggled with constant poverty, and John was jailed in debtors’ prison for a time. Phillis worked as a maid to help improve their lot, but the unaccustomed labor and poor conditions took a toll on her already fragile health. Phillis died at the age of just 31.
From the trauma of enslavement to repeated loss of loved ones and material suffering, Phillis’ story is a tragic one. Yet her poems show her unflagging belief in God’s providence within and beyond her circumstances. While acknowledging the sorrows of her early life, she praises divine mercy for allowing her to learn “That there’s a God, that there’s a Savior too; once, I redemption neither sought nor knew.” Thanks to that same mercy, she remains an eloquent witness for Christ centuries after she first wrote.
Mrs. Sarah White
(PCA member residing in PA)