Thegrio Politics
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Phillis Wheatley Gained Freedom and Attention Due to Her Poetry
Posted
October 19, 2021
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2:28Now PlayingAuthor and poet Phillis Wheatley was born circa 1753 in Western Africa.
She was captured and sold into slavery as a child and purchased by merchant and sailor John Wheatley in Boston. As the Wheatley family noticed her intelligence, they began to teach her to read and write.
Wheatly had her first poem published in a local newspaper at age 14. In 1773, she traveled with the Wheatly family to London to publish her first collection of poems. “Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral” became the first book of poetry published by a Black person in America.
On Oct. 18, 1775, the Wheatley family granted her emancipation, which made her a free woman.
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