First Black Poet

Phillis Wheatley Biography. After being kidnapped from West Africa and enslaved in Boston, Phillis Wheatley became the first African American and one of the first women to publish a book of poetry in the colonies in 1773.

Phillis Wheatley, also spelled Phyllis and Wheatly was the first African-American woman to publish a book of poetry. Born in West Africa, she was sold into slavery at the age of seven or eight and transported to North America.

Although she was an African slave, Phillis Wheatley was one of the best-known poets in pre-19th century America. Educated and enslaved in the household of prominent Boston commercialist John Wheatley, lionized in New England and England, with presses in both places publishing her poems, and paraded before the new republic’s political leadership and the old empire’s aristocracy, Wheatley was the abolitionists’ illustrative testimony that blacks could be both artistic and intellectual. Her name was a household word among literate colonists and her achievements a catalyst for the fledgling antislavery movement.

Born: May 8, 1753, West Africa

Died: December 5, 1784, Boston, MA

Children: Three

Spouse: John Peters (m. 1778–1784)

Buried: Copp's Hill Burying Ground, Boston, MA