122 Atlantic African, American, and European Backgrounds to Contact, Commerce, and Enslavementimportant part of the African American literary canon. It
was June Jordan, in an essay entitled “Th e Diffi cult Miracle
of Black Poetry in America: Or Something like a Sonnet for
Phillis Wheatley” in 1985, who fully reclaimed Wheatley as
an important literary fi gure and pointed out the revolution-
ary potential of her poems.
Phillis Wheatley was purchased as an enslaved maid-
servant by John and Susanna Wheatley on July 11, 1761,
when she was seven or eight years old. In the Wheatley
household, where unlike many enslaved children, she was
allowed to read, Wheatley demonstrated her prodigious in-
tellect. By the age of 12, she had published her fi rst poem,
“On Messrs Hussey and Coffi n” in the Newport Mercury in- And Selena Hastings, Countess of Huffi ngton and a
friend of the Wheatleys, helped Phillis Wheatley to pub-
lish her collection Poems on Various Subjects Religious and
Moral in 1773. Wheatley’s publication of a book on religious
and moral subjects directly contradicted the prevailing rac-
ist logic of the time, which insisted that enslaved people,
particularly enslaved women, were morally corrupt, and
thus required the controlling framework of slavery. Th e
publication of Poems was met with a variety of reactions.
Many critics, including Th omas Jeff erson, claimed that she
could not have written the poems (despite the prefatory “at-
testation” of 17 men of the Boston elite that she had) and
dismissed it as a simple act of imitation. However, Phillis
Wheatley toured the American Colonies and Britain with
her poems, and it was her acclaim as a poet that eventually
won her freedom from slavery on October 18, 1773.
Aft er the death of Mary Wheatley, the daughter of the
people who had purchased Phillis Wheatley, Phillis Wheat-
ley married John Peters, a free black grocer. Peters and
Wheatley had three children but two of them died during
the marriage. Peters left Wheatley, who returned to work
as a servant and died at the age of 31 during childbirth in a
boarding house and her third child died as well. Wheatley
had written a second manuscript of poems during this part
of her life, but it has never been found. June Jordan points
out the poems of a “free black woman” would not have been
marketable in those times and reminds critical readers of
her work that what she was able to publish with white sup-
port in the 18th century may not have refl ected her desires
or opinions, but rather the limits of her enslaved situation.
Wheatley wrote poems about the importance of Chris-
tianity, elegies for prominent members of Boston Society, a
poem in praise of King George when he repealed the Stamp
others. Nearly one-third of all slaves were taken from the
Congo region. Another third came from the area that is
now known as Benin and Nigeria.
Over the last two decades, many countries in the
west-central region have experienced political diffi culties
resulting in major armed confl ict and the displacement of
thousands of people. As a result, even the countries with the
most functional governments are burdened by poverty, lack
of education, and high external debt.
See also: Angolan/Kongolese; Kongo Cosmogram; Kongo
Kingdom
Jen Westmoreland BouchardBibliography
Vansina, Jan. How Societies Are Born: Governance in West Cen-
tral Africa before 1 600. Charlottesville: University of Virginia
Press, 2004.
Vansina, Jan. Paths in the Rainforests: Toward a History of Political
Tradition in Equatorial Africa. Madison: University of Wis-
consin Press, 1990.
Wheatley, Phillis
Phillis Wheatley (1754–1783) was the fi rst African Ameri-
can to publish a book and the second published female
poet in what would become the United States. Th ought to
have been born in Gambia in West Africa and enslaved and
transported to Massachusetts in bondage, Phillis Wheat-
ley is known as the fi rst African American published poet.
However, Wheatley’s signifi cance in the African American
literary tradition has been contested for almost 100 years.
During the Harlem Renaissance, literary historian Ar-
thur Schomburg, while praising Wheatley, noted that her
poetry cannot be considered great. James Weldon Johnson
complained that Wheatley’s poetry never spoke out against
slavery and that she showed “smug” contentment regard-
ing her escape from Africa. Th is criticism of Wheatley’s
so-called color blindness continued during the Black Arts
Movement associated with the reclamation of black poets in
the 1960s. In 1962, Rosey Poole lamented Wheatley’s lack of
strength and explained that rather than being an important
literary fi gure, she was a “literary curio.” In 1964, Vernon
Loggins called her a mere imitator. By 1972, R. Lynn Mason
argued that while Wheatley’s poetry may not establish her
as a “Soul Sister,” she must at least be considered as an