Phillis Wheatley
v. 1753-1784 18th century
Praise wrested from the night: singing mercy without silencing injustice.
Who was Phillis Wheatley?
Kidnapped as a child in West Africa and sold in Boston in 1761 to the Wheatley family, she learned English in sixteen months, then Latin, and published in London in 1773 a collection of religious and moral poems, the first book by an African American. Freed soon after, she married a free Black grocer, lost her infant children and died in poverty at thirty-one, preparing a second collection that never appeared.
In their own words
'Twas mercy brought me from my pagan land, taught my benighted soul to understand that there's a God, that there's a Saviour too.
In every human breast God has implanted a principle, which we call love of freedom; it is impatient of oppression, and pants for deliverance.
So shall the labours of the day begin, more pure, more guarded from the snares of sin.