AchievementSeptember 1773· literature

Phillis Wheatley publishes her Poems

Phillis Wheatley becomes the first African American to publish a book of poetry, refuting claims about Black intellect.

Key figures

Phillis Wheatley · Author

Resources

Primary sources·1

Primary source· Primary

Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773)

Phillis Wheatley

Digitized copy of Wheatley's landmark 1773 poetry volume.

Videos·1

Phillis Wheatley — Crash Course Black American History #7

CrashCourse

Websites·1

Phillis Wheatley (1754–1784)

Biography of the first published African American poet.

The web

Connections to other moments, systems, and investigations — the links rarely drawn together.

contradicts·Thread
White-Supremacist Ideology
Wheatley's published poems were paraded as living disproof of the era's claim that Africans could not reason or create.

Where to go next

White-Supremacist Ideology

Wheatley's published poems were paraded as living disproof of the era's claim that Africans could not reason or create.