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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillis_Wheatley?wprov=sfti1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poems_on_Various_Subjects,_Religious_and_Moral?wprov=sfti1
Lovely post. So inspiring
Excellent post! Thank you for remembering black history month!!
Answer: Phillis Wheatley
Phillis was enslaved at the age of 7 or 8 in West Africa and brought to America. Her enslavers, the Wheatley family from Boston, recognized her talent and educated her. She knew Latin and Greek at the age of 12.
She was encouraged to develop her writing and education, though many at that time including Thomas Jefferson, demeaned and discredited her. Her poetry could not find a publisher in the US, so the Wheatley’s took her to England, where she found a publisher and was lauded for her verse.
Check the Wikipedia entry:
Although the date and place of her birth are not documented, scholars believe that Phillis Wheatley was born in 1753 in West Africa, most likely in present-day Gambia or Senegal. She was sold by a local chief to a visiting trader, who took her to Boston on July 11, 1761, on a slave ship called The Phillis.
She was enslaved by John Wheatley, a wealthy Boston merchant and tailor, who bought the young girl as a slave for his wife Susanna. John and Susanna Wheatley named her Phillis, after the ship that had transported her to America. She was given their last name of Wheatley, as was a common custom if any surname was used for enslaved people.
The Wheatleys' 18-year-old daughter, Mary, was Phillis's first tutor in reading and writing. Their son, Nathaniel, also helped her. John Wheatley was known as a progressive throughout New England; his family afforded Phillis an unprecedented education for an enslaved person, and one unusual for a woman of any race. By the age of 12, she was reading Greek and Latin classics in their original languages, as well as difficult passages from the Bible. At the age of 14, she wrote her first poem, "To the University of Cambridge [Harvard], in New England". Recognizing her literary ability, the Wheatley family supported Phillis's education. The Wheatleys often showed off her abilities to friends and family. Strongly influenced by her readings of the works of Alexander Pope, John Milton, Homer, Horace, and Virgil, Phillis began to write poetry.