From the trauma of enslavement to repeated loss of loved ones and material suffering, Phillis’ story is a tragic one. Yet her poems show her unflagging belief in God’s providence within and beyond her circumstances. While acknowledging the sorrows of her early life, she praises divine mercy for allowing her to learn “That there’s a God, that there’s a Savior too; once, I redemption neither sought nor knew.” 

While we know her as Phillis Wheatley, the first African-American published poet remains a mystery to us in many ways. This is because she was kidnapped from her birth family and sold into slavery while still a small child. All we know of her origins is that she was born somewhere in West Africa around the year 1753, then transported to America, where she was purchased by a wealthy Boston couple, John and Susanna Wheatley. They intended for the little girl—around seven at the time—to work as a servant and companion to Mrs. Wheatley.

The Wheatley family named her after the Phillis, the ship on which she had made the Atlantic passage to America. Noticing how rapidly Phillis learned English, the family tutored her in reading and writing. She also attended Old South Meeting House, a Congregational church, alongside the family and showed an interest in Scripture and theology from a young age. Before Phillis was a teenager, she was avidly studying not only the Bible, but ancient Greek and Latin classics and English literature as well. She began experimenting with poetry and published her first poem in a newspaper at age 12. The Wheatleys encouraged Phillis and had a strikingly progressive attitude about education for their time; however, the fact remains that Phillis was enslaved by them until after she reached adulthood.
When the famous evangelist George Whitefield died in 1770, teenaged Phillis published an elegy for him. She had likely heard him preach in Boston just the week before. Reflecting on Whitefield’s ministry she wrote this exhortation about responding to Christ:

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