As the first published African American poet, Phillis Wheatley-Peters paved the way for future Black writers to express themselves through literature and activism art.

In 1773, London’s presses produced a small book with a portrait of a young woman, among many other similar copies. The woman wore a respectable bonnet across her forehead, lost deep in thought while ...

In 1765, when Phillis Wheatley was about eleven years old, she wrote a letter to Reverend Samson Occum, a Mohegan Indian and an ordained Presbyterian minister. Despite the difference in their ages ...

click image for close-up A rare portrait of Phillis Wheatley shows her facing forward, wearing an evening dress and jewelry. The portrait appeared in Revue des Colonies in Paris between 1834 and 1842.