The incredible fate of Philis Wheatley, a slave that became the first African American poet in history

Is his name. Philis, like a slave boat, on which it has been displaced. His name is Wheatley, His Last Name. There are several fate on the grace in the stark history of Atlantic trafficking. Our heroine was born in 1753 in Senegambia. This huge area of ​​West Africa serves as a reservoir for companies specializing in selling slaves. White people don’t follow black, they go to them for modest money that serve as commercial partners. In 1761 a little girl whose time has forgotten the real name that has been like a product like Philis. He only arrives at the beginning of summer when he arrives in Boston.

Benevolent family

Most of the future of the United States economy is then based on slavery. The child goes to the family of the prosperous designers, wheat. Fortunately, he never knows the hell of cotton fields. Besides, his mistress, Susanna and the eldest daughter of the house, Mariam, love their small servants. The child is lively and smart, teaching him to read him. Who will believe that it comes from a circle of the world where writing is not used? It is better to be educated in a few months than many clothes pursuing Boston streets. He reads Latin and Greek on 12. Two years later, he formed his first poem.

Literary success

Wheatley is advanced. They cannot consider the household’s work to trust such a profanity. Philis becomes involving their world-class dinners. While he is 20 years old, the eldest son of Wheatley accompanies him in England hoping to find him editor. The reputation of the young woman, so Erudith causes the interest of the mayor of London, and Huntingdon’s county contributes to its publication Selected poems (in English, Poems on different subjects, religious and morale) Return to Boston, the young author, who has now released, marries a black man, the merchant is also free.

Tragic end and generation

Alas, his literary success does not provide him in an old continent. And here is the glory of misfortune. Her husband’s imprisonment for debts, then the death of his defenders … Filis accepts the hardest work to feed his children. He dies from 31st pneumonia. Without knowing that in France, on the eve of the revolution, the thinkers of the Lighting members of Société de Des Amis des NOIRS, like Condorcet, read his numbers. However, generations do not forget that. Philis Urenli is now one of the hundred-ranking African American individuals, and Pennsylvania Robert-Maurice University’s building is named. His elegant poetry remains three centuries of death, the call for tolerance, which makes sense to fight for slavery and civil rights.

*Virgine Gaurod, Doctor of History. Discover other historical characters with Virginie Girod on Podcast In the base of history and every week at 3 o’clock. In Europe 1:A number