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AchievementSeptember 1773· literature

Phillis Wheatley Publishes First Book of Poetry by a Black American

Phillis Wheatley, an enslaved woman in Boston, published Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral in London in 1773, the first book of poetry published by a Black American and only the third book published by an American woman. Her achievement prompted a celebrated examination by Boston's leading men who certified her authorship.

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    White-Supremacist Ideology

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

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