The Trials of Phillis Wheatley by Henry Louis Gates Jr.

(We appreciate it!) Find out more at, , or by following Jacke and Mike on Twitter at and Or send an email to Learn more about your ad choices. How did this happen? And what does it tell us about Phillis Wheatley, her critics, her champions, and ourselves? Help support the show at /literature or /shop. And yet, in spite of all these accomplishments and pioneering achievements, her legacy is a complicated one, as in the words of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., she wrote what has been the most reviled poem in African American literature. For a time, Wheatley was the most famous black woman in the West. The first person of African descent to publish a book of poems in English, she was emancipated by her owners in recognition of her literary achievement. Her appearance as a poet was so unlikely – and such a dangerous example for pro-slavery critics – that she eventually was put on trial to establish whether she truly wrote her poems. 1 Henry Louis Gates, Jr., The Trials of Phillis Wheatley: Americas First Black Poet and Her Encounters with the Founding Fathers (Basic Civitas Books: New York. Description In 1773, the slave Phillis Wheatley literally wrote her way to freedom. She was lauded by Voltaire and Gibbon and Ben Franklin she exchanged admiring letters with George Washington and she exposed some of Thomas Jefferson’s highest ideals and lowest shortcomings.

It was yet another milestone in Wheatley’s extraordinary life, which began with a childhood in Africa, a passage on a slave ship, twelve years in Boston living as a slave, and then her unprecedented education and emergence as a poet. In 1773, Phillis Wheatley became the first person of African descent to publish a book of poems in the English language.

The Trials of Phillis Wheatley by Henry Louis Gates Jr.