0:07

In February of seventeen seventy six,

0:10

General George Washington took time out

0:12

from fighting a bloody war of independence to

0:14

correspond with a young woman. A

0:16

poet, Phyllis Swheetley,

0:19

had just written a poem for him.

0:21

It was titled to His Excellency,

0:23

General Washington. In it,

0:25

she offered in visions of victory and relief

0:28

from British tyranny. Proceed

0:31

Great Chief, with a virtue on thy

0:33

side, thy every action.

0:36

Let the Goddess guide a crown,

0:38

a mansion, and a throne that shine

0:41

with gold. Unfading Washington

0:44

be thine. Washington

0:48

was enchanted and wildly

0:50

impressed. I shall be happy

0:52

to see a person so favored by the

0:54

muses, and to whom nature has been

0:56

so liberal and beneficent in her dispensations.

1:00

I am with great respect, your

1:02

obedient, humble servant. Phyllis

1:06

Wheatley was an extraordinary woman. She

1:09

defied all the odds to become the first African

1:11

American to publish a book of poetry in America.

1:14

Her poems were lauded by kings and presidents.

1:18

She's recognized as

1:20

the fore mother of African

1:22

American literature. That's vincent

1:24

Karta, author of Phyllis Wheatley, Biography

1:27

of a Genius in Bondage. She published

1:29

a book when she was at

1:32

most twenty years old, and

1:34

she became a transatlantic international

1:36

figure when she was barely

1:38

out of her teens, while she was still

1:41

a slave. I mean, it's really a kind of

1:43

astounding story of her life,

1:45

how much she achieved so early she

1:47

became an international celebrity.

1:50

Phyllis was a poet, an elegist,

1:53

and a woman who used her considerable talents

1:55

to convince the people who owned her to

1:57

return her freedom to her. From

2:07

I Heart Radio and Tribeca Studios, this

2:10

is fierce. I can't type. Yes,

2:13

women were going to problem a

2:16

podcast about the incredible women who never

2:18

made it in your history books and the modern

2:20

women carrying on their legacies today. Us

2:22

to the Lady, the Fair and the Week.

2:25

I can't find women workers don't

2:27

mind routine, repetitive working. Will

2:30

you make a copy of this naturally?

2:32

Each week we're bringing you the story of a groundbreaking

2:35

woman from the past who made huge contributions

2:37

to the present, but whose name still

2:39

isn't on the tips of our tongues. For whatever

2:41

reason. Maybe it's

2:43

because men wrote most of history.

2:48

At the end of each episode, I'll be joined by a woman

2:50

living today who's standing on the shoulders of this

2:52

historical figure. Whether she knows it

2:55

or not. Phyllis

3:05

is better known than a lot of women in this series.

3:08

She has libraries and schools named after her,

3:11

and yet I've met so many men and women

3:13

in the writing and publishing community who

3:15

had never heard her name before. The

3:26

woman who would later write under the name Phyllis Wheatley

3:28

was only about seven years old when she

3:30

was forced to endure the Middle Passage from West

3:33

Africa on a slave ship called

3:35

the Phillis. After

3:38

an arduous journey, the ship dropped her in Boston,

3:40

where she was sold for a pittance to Susanna Wheatley,

3:43

the wife of a prominent Boston merchant. The

3:46

captain of the ship believed the girl was too sick to

3:48

survive much longer, and he wanted to

3:50

recoup at least some of his money for her passage.

3:54

The guests that she was seven because she

3:56

had just lost some of her baby teeth. Her

3:59

own name, the when her parents had given

4:01

her when she was born, is lost

4:03

to us. The Wheatley's

4:05

named her after the ship she came over on a

4:09

Wheatly relative described her as tiny

4:11

and nearly naked, covered only in

4:13

a dirty carpet, despite the fact that she

4:15

was obviously ill. Phyllis

4:18

had been purchased to work as a house slave, but

4:21

Susannah Wheatley and her twin eighteen year old

4:23

children, Nathaniel and Mary, also began teaching

4:26

her to read and write.

4:32

There were about fifteen thousand people living

4:34

in Boston at this time, maybe

4:36

a thousand of them were black. Of

4:39

those, most were free, but no

4:41

black children were known to be enrolled in school.

4:45

When she quickly took to both reading and writing,

4:47

they moved on to Latin, Greek, British literature,

4:50

astronomy, and history. Interestingly,

4:53

if you compare her writing to

4:56

that of a number of the white

4:59

women and that she corresponded with,

5:02

her writing is much better.

5:05

Despite having begun her English language

5:07

education significantly later than most children

5:10

in Boston and under the extremely

5:12

traumatic circumstances of slavery,

5:15

her skills far outstripped those of her peers.

5:19

So they bought this small child,

5:21

and she quickly demonstrated

5:24

that she was a prodigy, because she

5:26

within four years she was attempting

5:29

to write poetry, so they

5:31

gave her access to an education

5:34

that was beyond the access

5:36

to education that most white children

5:39

Boston were given. Anyone

5:41

who spent any amount of time studying this period

5:43

of American history knows that white

5:45

slave owners most often prevented slaves

5:48

from being educated. But we

5:50

shouldn't assign undue heroism to the Wheatlies

5:53

living in Boston in the mid seventeen hundreds.

5:55

They weren't exactly risking their social standing

5:58

by doing this, and they didn't sending

6:00

legal repercussions for it. Actual

6:03

laws prohibiting slave literacy would become

6:05

most prominent in the eighteen hundreds after

6:07

Phillis's death, and those laws

6:09

were mostly enacted in the South. Even

6:13

in the South, it wasn't always illegal

6:15

to teach people to read. That's Stana Williams,

6:18

chair of the Department of English and interim dean

6:20

of the Graduate School at Howard University.

6:23

And you don't have that same kind of difficulty

6:26

in the North in terms of the uprising and rebellion,

6:28

in part because plantation, labor, and

6:30

the harshness of slavery in the

6:33

South is different. In the North. It can

6:35

just be de facto understood

6:37

that this isn't in the interest

6:39

of slaveholding to teach people to

6:41

read, because we see the connection between

6:44

literacy and humanity, literacy and freedom,

6:47

literacy and property. So

6:50

although she was encouraged in unprecedented

6:52

ways to the Wheetlies, Phillis

6:54

was also a curiosity in

6:56

some ways a social experiment, and

6:59

she was not free. There

7:01

were networks of people who supported

7:03

Phillis Wheatly's work, and they

7:05

were friends of the Wheatlies in some

7:07

instances, so it was almost an experiment

7:10

in terms of thinking about

7:12

whether this was something that was viable and

7:14

what the implications would be of this

7:17

kind of education, and then this kind of

7:19

support of a girl who's otherwise

7:21

enslave. We know that

7:23

it's not all altruistic because they don't

7:25

free her immediately and that they own her

7:27

to begin with, so they aren't quote

7:30

unquote good people. Viewing

7:33

Phillis as a commodity, the Wheatlies would likely

7:35

have made certain calculations as to her worth

7:37

to them. Wheatly, for most

7:40

of her adult life, was fairly frail.

7:43

She was not able to do domestic

7:45

work in the same way that other people would have been

7:47

people who worked terribly hard. There's a value

7:50

orientation there as well, that says she

7:52

has to be worth something, otherwise she can be

7:54

sold or dismissed. Had

7:56

she been fully robust and

7:58

able to complete domestic

8:00

work, it very well may have been a different scenario.

8:03

They might not have been looking for their

8:05

giftedness in her to take advantage

8:08

of their purchase. Here's

8:11

Vincent Coretta again. The better

8:14

she looked, the better they looked. It was almost

8:16

as if she was like a luxury good, the

8:18

kind of equivalent of you buy a BMW

8:21

and you park it from your house so all your

8:23

neighbors can envy you in their

8:25

social circles. It also reflected well on the Wheatley's

8:28

that the education they were providing was a Christian

8:30

education. They taught her to read

8:32

and paraphrase the Bible. She

8:34

was recognized very quickly as a phenomenon.

8:38

John Wheatley, Susanna Whetley's husband,

8:41

wrote, without any assistance

8:43

from school education, and by

8:45

only what she was taught in the family, she

8:48

in sixteen months time from her arrival,

8:50

attained the English language. She

8:53

has a great inclination to learn the Latin

8:56

tongue and has made some progress in it.

8:58

She wrote her first known Poe him at eleven.

9:01

When she was about thirteen, the Newport

9:03

Mercury newspaper published one of her poems

9:05

after Susannah Wheatley submitted it to them.

9:08

The poem described two men nearly shipwrecked

9:10

in a storm off of Cape Cod. Phillis

9:13

had heard the story when the men came to dinner at the Wheatly's

9:15

house. Suppose

9:19

the groundless gulf had snatched

9:21

away Hussy and Coffin to

9:23

the raging sea. Where

9:26

would they go? Where would

9:28

be their abode with the

9:30

supreme and independent God? Or

9:33

made their beds down in the shades below?

9:36

Were neither pleasure nor content

9:39

can flow? That's

9:42

an actress reading Phillis Wheatley's words. The

9:45

sources for her quotes throughout the episode

9:47

are from her book Poems on Various Subjects,

9:50

Religious and Moral, published in seventeen seventy

9:52

three, and also from various periodicals

9:54

which published her poems and letters during her life,

9:57

So that poem didn't get much

10:00

attention it was a local publication.

10:03

She never republished it. Still,

10:06

the publication of that poem made Phillis among

10:09

the first published African Americans in America.

10:12

Three years later, at age seventeen,

10:15

Phyllis wrote a poem about the Boston massacre

10:17

and an elegy to a man named George Whitfield.

10:20

He was an incredibly popular evangelical

10:22

preacher and the chaplain to the Countess of Huntingdon

10:25

in England. He

10:27

leaves this earth for Heaven's unmeasured

10:30

height and world's unknown

10:33

received him from our sight there

10:36

with field wings, with rapid

10:39

course his way and sales

10:41

to Zion through vast seas

10:43

of day. That

10:47

poem caught on like wildfire and was

10:49

published all over the country, in Boston,

10:52

Newport, and Philadelphia. He

10:54

was published in London the next year, giving

10:56

Phillis a kind of fame on both sides of the ocean,

10:59

which was the lie. What I'm saying, well, you

11:01

you've gone from publishing in Indianapolis

11:04

to publishing in New York City. London

11:06

is where you wanted to publish.

11:09

The academic and biographer Henry Louis Gates

11:11

said it made her the Tony Morrison

11:14

of her time. It

11:17

was then that the Countess of Huntingdon became interested

11:19

in Wheatley. The Countess

11:21

sent a couple of ministers to interview Phillis. One

11:24

of them gave her writing assignment to see if she could actually

11:26

write poetry. Phyllis

11:29

astonished the minister by writing the poem right

11:31

in front of him. He

11:33

wrote to the Countess that he was amazed by this young

11:35

girl, and

11:37

remember she's an enslaved teenager.

11:39

At this point he said, she's the

11:42

real deal. And this ultimately

11:44

eventually led to the Counts of Huntingdon's

11:47

being the patroness of Wheatley's

11:50

first well only published

11:52

book in seventeen seventy three that came

11:54

out in London and was dedicated to

11:57

the Countess of Huntingdon. An

11:59

engraving of Phyllis appeared in the opening pages.

12:02

The book, Poems on Various

12:05

Subjects, religious and Moral, was

12:07

the first book of poetry published in the English

12:09

language by a person of African descent. Henry

12:12

Lewis Gates said the publication was greeted with something

12:14

akin to the shock of cloning a sheep. The

12:17

book's publisher, Archibald Bell, put

12:20

it this way, the book displays

12:22

perhaps one of the greatest instances of

12:25

pure, unassisted genius that the world

12:27

has ever produced. The author

12:29

is a native of Africa and

12:31

left not the dark part of the habitable system until

12:33

she was eight years old. Voltaire

12:37

writes about her as proof

12:40

that people of African descent

12:42

are capable of writing literature,

12:45

whereas some people had denied that

12:47

that was a possibility. Her

12:49

book was reviewed fairly widely

12:52

in England, especially in London,

12:55

and most of the reviews

12:57

were positive, though somewhere

13:00

kind of begrudgingly so. Phyllis

13:03

was celebrated for her mastery of the English language,

13:06

but academics now believe her gift for language

13:08

would have been well established before she was forced

13:10

to leave her home, before she had ever even

13:12

heard a word of the English language. What

13:15

we have to keep in mind is based

13:17

on where we think that they was taken from. She

13:19

would have been fluent minimally in Wolof

13:22

and in Arabic, and

13:24

would have been able to move between languages

13:26

fairly easily, so her command of language

13:28

would not have been anything unusual.

13:31

You have a number of literate

13:34

enslaved people who are writing but not

13:36

in English but in Arabic. We see

13:38

so little of that in nineteenth century

13:40

literature, in part because people

13:43

in the America's were not familiar with Arabic. There

13:46

are some conversations about Weekly

13:48

being seen very early on with charcoal

13:51

making marks and some scholars speculate

13:53

that she was trying to write Arabic, but the Weekly is

13:55

unable to recognize it, saw

13:57

it just as markings. I think her

13:59

gift of language is what makes

14:02

it possible for her to pick up English and pick up

14:04

Latin and integrate all

14:06

of these different things into something that is

14:08

palatable for the people who are consuming

14:10

her work. Time for a quick break when

14:13

we come back, will follow Phyllis on her life

14:15

faltering trip to London. In

14:20

seventeen seventy three, when she was

14:22

about twenty years old, Phillis traveled

14:25

to London with Nathaniel Wheatley to oversee her

14:27

books publication. It was

14:29

a whirlwind tour that included work, tourism,

14:32

and rubbing elbows with the literary elite.

14:35

While there, she received a visit from Benjamin

14:37

Franklin and toured the Tower of London

14:40

with anti slavery activist Granville

14:42

Sharp. That London

14:44

visit would forever change the course of Phillis Wheatley's

14:46

life. See The year

14:49

before her visit, the British courts had handed

14:51

down the Mansfield Decision. Lord

14:53

Mansfield, Lord Chief Justice ruled

14:56

that no slave brought to

14:59

England from the alumnies could

15:01

forcibly legally be brought

15:04

back to the colonies as a slave.

15:07

That ruling was widely

15:09

publicized in the colonies, in

15:11

fact, that newspapers that would be warnings,

15:14

don't bring your slaves to England

15:16

because they can run away and you won't

15:19

be able to bring them back. People

15:22

used to think of Phillis Wheatley as a fairly

15:24

passive young girl who

15:27

just benefited from the charity of others.

15:30

Phillis Sweetley is a much more assertive

15:33

young woman, and so what I think

15:35

she did. She said to her

15:37

master's son, Look, I'll go

15:39

back, but I need to have your

15:42

word given to me in front of these people

15:44

that I will be freed if

15:47

I go back. The wheatley Is

15:49

granted her freedom, and

15:51

Phyllis, demonstrating remarkable

15:53

business savvy for her age, took

15:55

several steps to distribute written proof

15:57

of that freedom. She was meant

15:59

to see of the sales of her book,

16:02

and she wanted to be sure that money went to her and

16:04

not the Wheedlies. But freedom

16:06

didn't come with kind of guarantees of protection

16:09

or rights for a young black woman in pre

16:11

Revolutionary War America, and

16:13

life was precarious enough for any person

16:15

trying to live by their pen People

16:17

who were free people of

16:19

African descent often were property

16:22

or had a skill set that made

16:25

them indispensable. And

16:28

because she wasn't a seamstress,

16:30

she wasn't a laundress. There weren't

16:32

things that she could have done where she

16:34

could have made a good living independent

16:37

of working with other

16:40

people in her community. There

16:42

was no such thing as complete freedom

16:45

at any moment. Without a white person

16:47

to affirm her identity and affirmer freedom,

16:49

those papers can become meaningless. There

16:52

were plenty of instances of free black people

16:54

being enslaved despite having viable

16:56

papers. The volatility even

16:58

for free people is something that

17:00

we have to take into consideration and understand

17:03

that the options that people had would have been very limited.

17:07

Phyllis knew she'd made resistance from people

17:09

in Boston, so it is in her best

17:11

interest to keep the Wheatly family close as

17:13

her allies. She went back,

17:16

and she recognized that she had

17:18

to become a businesswoman. She returned

17:21

to live with the Wheatlies. Literary

17:23

critics in the Civil rights era would later point

17:25

to at least seeming ambivalence towards the institution

17:28

of slavery upon her return from

17:30

London, though we do get to see her

17:32

decisively condemned slavery imprint. She

17:35

had long shared a correspondence with a minister named

17:37

sansomcom One of her letters

17:39

to him was published in March of seventeen seventy

17:41

four in the Connecticut Gazette. In

17:44

it, she responds to a strong argument he's made

17:46

against slavery, and she takes it even

17:48

further. In every

17:51

human breast, God has implanted

17:53

a principle which we call

17:55

love of freedom. It is

17:57

impatient of oppression and hants

18:00

for deliverance. How well

18:02

the cry for liberty and the reverse

18:05

disposition for the exercise of oppressive

18:07

power over others agree. I

18:10

humbly think it does not require the penetration

18:13

of a philosopher to determine.

18:16

And this is why I think it's so important to read

18:18

weekly holistically, because

18:20

her letters are far more revealing and

18:23

she's far more critical of the

18:25

state of enslavement than in

18:27

the poems that we get. And

18:30

I say the ones that we get as opposed to saying

18:33

the ones that she wrote, because we have no idea

18:35

if she wrote twenty poems

18:37

that made it clear that enslavement

18:39

was completely wrong, and none of those came to

18:41

the surface because it would not have been in the interests

18:44

of the Wheklies to bring those to the four. So

18:46

between the Wheklies as her immediate

18:49

kind of sensors to um,

18:52

the editors and the presses that

18:54

she would have had to work with to try to get her

18:56

work out, there was absolute censorship.

19:01

Phillis had to survive as best she could in

19:03

the context she was forced into. She

19:06

used her talents to forge a path forward

19:08

for herself. Part

19:10

of being a good business woman was keeping her name

19:12

in print. Phyllis knew

19:14

that writing poems about high profile people would

19:16

get her attention and accolades, so

19:19

in seventeen she sent George Washington

19:21

her poem about him. She enclosed

19:24

a letter. I

19:28

have taken the freedom to address your excellency

19:30

in the enclosed poem and entreat

19:33

your acceptance. You're

19:35

being appointed by the Grand Continental Congress

19:38

to be Generalist sum all of the armies of North America,

19:41

together with the fame of your virtues, excite

19:44

sensations not easy to

19:46

suppress. Wishing your

19:48

excellency all possible

19:50

success in the great cause

19:53

you are so generously engaged in. I

19:56

thank you most sincerely for your polite

19:59

notice of me. The elegant lines you enclosed,

20:02

however undeserving I may be of such

20:04

encomium and panegyric. The

20:07

style and manner exhibit a striking

20:09

proof of your poetical talents. If

20:12

you should ever come to Cambridge or near

20:14

headquarters, I shall be happy to see

20:16

a person so favored by the muses,

20:19

and to whom nature has been so liberal and beneficent

20:22

in her dispensations. I

20:24

am, with great respect, your

20:26

obedient, humble servant. I

20:30

think it was very intentional. So when she

20:32

talks about the pursuit of

20:35

freedom from tyranny and celebrates

20:38

it in an elegy of heroic

20:40

person, her point in doing

20:42

that, I think overwhelmingly is I

20:44

am one of you, and I

20:47

too want my freedom. We want

20:49

freedom from the tyranny of oppression. Historians

20:52

differ as to whether Phillis actually visited

20:55

Washington and Cambridge or not. Some

20:57

say she passed a half hour with them, Some

21:00

say she delighted him and his troops. Others

21:03

say they never met at all, but

21:05

he would later help her publish that poem in

21:07

the Virginia gazette. The

21:09

poems to specific people are also

21:12

customary for the time where

21:14

that was part of how you got some

21:16

fame by writing to someone

21:19

and in celebration of someone, petitioning

21:21

someone who is your benefactor,

21:24

to celebrate them because they give

21:26

you money, because you make them look good. Despite

21:29

her publications and accolades, life as

21:31

a free woman was never going to be easy for

21:33

Phyllis. For one, the country was at

21:35

war in turmoil, and

21:37

to her long time benefactor, Susanna Wheatley

21:40

passed away in seventeen seventy four. Most

21:43

of Phyllis's supporters were preoccupied

21:46

or long dead. She attempted

21:48

to print a second book, dedicated to Benjamin Franklin,

21:50

but she couldn't get it published. That's

21:53

probably in part because there was a depression

21:55

going on the war was going on.

21:58

She couldn't publish it in Lunn because

22:00

of the war. Gates beautifully

22:03

wrote that phyllis is freedom enslaved or

22:05

to a life of hardship. In

22:09

seventy eight, when she was about twenty

22:11

four, she married John Peters,

22:14

a free black person like herself and a

22:16

man of many talents. He

22:18

worked as a lawyer, a doctor, and a businessman.

22:21

He seemed to have a finger in just about every pot,

22:24

and yet as a black man, he

22:26

was always on the edges of society, feeding

22:28

at the crumbs of the business world. He

22:31

hit bankruptcy more than once. The

22:34

challenges that we see with her husband

22:36

and his legal issues, I think

22:38

would have everything to do with the

22:41

time in the space where he

22:43

wasn't propertied and

22:46

he didn't have a skill set that

22:49

was indispensable either. So we see

22:52

disputes happening that

22:54

can't be resolved and where there is some

22:56

discrimination involved. We imagine

22:59

it's just a very difficult time

23:01

for free people to be

23:03

independent of the society

23:05

that they find themselves in. The options

23:08

just were limited for people of color. There

23:11

aren't many records of Phillis from seventeen

23:13

eighty four. Her

23:16

husband was in and out of legal trouble and struggling

23:18

to find work and pay bills as a free black man.

23:21

Vincent Coretta speculates that the couple may

23:23

have tried to stay out of the public eye to avoid trouble.

23:26

In seventy four, Phillis did attempt

23:29

to publish another volume of poems, but

23:31

she passed away before she was able to She

23:34

probably died of asthma, because

23:37

she says that in previous

23:40

winters, and she mentions in various

23:43

letters to people, I have my asthmatic

23:45

condition again. I'm ill

23:47

again from that. Phillis died

23:49

in four she

23:52

was only about thirty years old. Her

23:54

book wasn't published in America

23:57

until two years after her death,

23:59

and sudden it wasn't published until seventeen

24:02

six in Philadelphia. She was

24:04

only the second American woman

24:06

after and Brad Street in the seventeenth

24:09

century, who published a book in America.

24:12

Then in the nineteenth century, on

24:14

both sides of the Atlantic, she

24:17

was used as an

24:20

example of the

24:22

abilities of people of African descent

24:24

by both people who are in favor

24:27

of the slave trade or against a slave

24:29

trade on both sides. One

24:32

of her most famous and most controversial poems

24:34

is found in her book Poems on Various Subjects,

24:37

religious and moral. It's

24:39

called on being brought from Africa to America,

24:43

which was mercy brought me from my pagan

24:45

land, taught my benighted

24:47

soul to understand that

24:50

there's a God, that there's a savior

24:52

too. Once I redemption

24:55

neither sought nor new. Some

24:58

view our sable race with scornful

25:01

eye. Their color is

25:03

a diabolic die. Remember

25:06

Christians negroes

25:08

black as Kane may be

25:11

refined and joined the angelic

25:13

train. I

25:15

think a particular kind of reading of that poem

25:18

makes it clear that it's not as

25:21

conciliatory and conservative

25:23

as one might imagine, where she, you

25:25

know, writes towards mercy that brought me from my

25:27

pagan land, which suggests that you know, she was grateful

25:30

for being taken from Africa because she was introduced

25:32

to Christianity. And I think if we

25:35

read it differently, we see the irony

25:37

of mercy. If it is mercy

25:39

that brought her from a pagan lands, then how do you

25:41

explain the violence and the enslavement,

25:44

which is not characteristic of

25:47

her land of peace. She probably

25:49

had different ideas of what pagan

25:51

meant, particularly in relation to

25:53

Christianity, which you know comes

25:55

out of paganism. I think

25:57

we can see that there are at least two

26:00

meanings happening in that poem.

26:02

I think she's feeding into that discourse

26:05

at the time where religious

26:08

leaders were trying to decide whether or

26:10

not a person who had

26:13

been indoctrinated into Christianity

26:15

should then be free. Um it's a

26:18

real discourse that's happening at the time to say, all

26:20

right, if a person is baptized and they become Christian,

26:22

can you continue to enslave them?

26:24

So I think she's very clearly writing

26:26

herself into that discourse to say, I

26:29

see your debates, and the way that

26:31

you're leaning is Christians or

26:33

Negroes, unco blacks, cane from

26:36

the supposed curse have access

26:38

to Christianity too, and as such should

26:40

be free. It's

26:45

only recently, in the past few decades

26:47

that this type of nuanced interpretation of Phyllis's

26:50

work has gained more recognition and appreciation.

26:53

In the twentieth century,

26:55

people didn't write as

26:57

much about her, and then in the

27:00

nine seventies there was

27:02

a lot of criticism of her

27:04

by both white and black literary

27:06

critics, one of whom accused

27:09

her of having a white mind, that

27:11

she wasn't black enough, she

27:13

wasn't political enough. From

27:16

the eighties on, we've become

27:18

much more sophisticated in the way we're

27:20

reading her works, and

27:23

we're much more conscious of the fact that

27:25

what we need to take into consideration

27:27

when we're reading a particular poem, was it

27:29

written while she was a slave or

27:32

after she was free. There

27:34

are a number of schools named after

27:36

Phillis Wheetlely and in the country,

27:39

but we can always do more to make her known.

27:41

Time for a break. When we come back, I

27:44

sit down with the renowned poet Nikki Giovanni.

27:46

MS. Giovanni was kind enough to share her thoughts

27:48

on Phillis Wheetley with us and describe

27:50

her own path to becoming a published poet

27:53

at an extremely young age. Opinions

27:57

of Phillis Wheetley have changed drastically over

28:00

the years, and even though her

28:02

work is increasingly recognized, she hasn't

28:04

always been included in the Western canon of great

28:06

poets that get taught in schools. The

28:09

nature of the art world is that you

28:11

never know how long it's going to take people

28:13

to understand what great work you did.

28:16

That's the poet Nikki Giovanni. She's

28:19

one of America's most celebrated living poets

28:21

today. Two centuries

28:23

after Phillis made her mark in the world, Nikki Giovanni

28:25

created her own success by self publishing her

28:27

first book of poetry when she was just twenty

28:30

four years old. She sold a hundred

28:32

copies of that book out of the trunk of her car, kick

28:34

starting a career that spanned five decades.

28:38

Miss Giovanni has won the Langston Hughes Medal

28:40

and the un Double A CP Image Award. She's

28:43

also been nominated for a Grammy for her poetry

28:45

album, The Nikki Giovanni Poetry

28:47

Collection. We spoke

28:49

to Miss Giovanni at Virginia Tech, where she

28:51

teaches poetry. We talked

28:53

about how she handles Phillis Whetley in the classroom

28:56

and the complexity involved in referring to Phillis

28:59

as a first in the world of poetry.

29:03

Do you discuss Phillis sweetly in your classes. We

29:05

talk about people like Phillis Wheatley and

29:08

the fact that she had a voice and she was determined

29:10

to use it. That's what's important. Now.

29:12

Miss Wheatley, of course, was enslaved. She was

29:14

purchased by somebody, and I

29:16

think it's important not to be

29:18

purchased by somebody. Now.

29:21

Miss Wheatley couldn't help it because that was the

29:23

age you grew in. But now you

29:25

have to own yourself. You just

29:27

have to own yourself. I have a copy of her

29:29

first edition. I was at an

29:31

auction. I was able to do it as hanging in my house.

29:34

So my respecting, my love of

29:36

phillis what she had was she had

29:38

something to say, and she was in Boston,

29:40

and we forget that Bostonians and Mr

29:42

Wheatley would be a part of it. Had slaves

29:45

And someone said, oh, they taught her to read and write,

29:48

But the enslaved had learned to read

29:50

and write a long time. They had to because

29:52

they're learning to listen to people and

29:54

they're talking back. What was the landscape

29:56

like when you first broke into the world of poetry.

29:59

I'm not even sure that I've broke into the poetry

30:01

world. It's what I can do. I couldn't

30:03

sing, I don't know how to dance. I'm not an actress.

30:06

I had a really very pretty sister, so

30:08

I didn't want to try to be, you know, the most beautiful

30:11

person in the world. All I could do, actually,

30:13

and all I enjoyed doing, was watching. And

30:15

that's what writers do. We watch where

30:17

there's still barriers to you when you want to get published for the

30:19

first time. One of the big problems

30:22

is that everybody thinks somebody ought to be there

30:24

to help them do their work. It's

30:26

not true. It's your work, you get there

30:28

and you take it to the people that you want to hear. So

30:31

the main thing that you have to know, especially

30:33

if you want to be a poet, is that you have to find

30:36

your audience and let them hear what you're doing.

30:38

There are no barriers to that. The problem

30:40

will be, of course, that you're not gonna make a million dollars,

30:42

that you're not gonna have your private plane to pick

30:44

you up, you're not gonna have your limousine,

30:47

you're not gonna have some big fat guy being

30:49

your security guard. All of

30:51

that is crapped. Anyway, how's your own

30:53

poetry evolved since you first started out. I've

30:56

been in this business, if you want to call it

30:58

that, for over fifty years, so I should

31:00

have grown some, which I hope I did.

31:02

I think my first book was published when

31:04

I was twenty four, and

31:07

I have a book that will be out in the fall called

31:09

Make Me Rain. And if I didn't

31:11

grow between my first book and the one that's

31:13

coming, something's wrong with somebody. You

31:15

were young when you first published, Can you tell

31:18

us a little bit about how you made that happen? Well,

31:20

the first book that I published called Black Feeling,

31:22

Black Talk, and I published it. I

31:25

lived in New York, had a friend in the village. We published

31:27

it, and I asked him, you know, if

31:29

I published a hundred books, what would it cost me?

31:32

And he said, oh, I can do a hundred books

31:34

for a hundred dollars, which to me, I'm

31:36

a good business person. I'll never be rich because I don't

31:38

want to be rich, but I could do that.

31:40

Division Oh, that means I can sell the book for

31:42

a dollar a piece, and I'll break even. I

31:44

had little votes of wagon. Just put the books

31:46

in the votes wagon. And you know, you go around and you

31:49

read your poetry and people like a form

31:51

or something, and you can sell anybody

31:53

anything for a dollar. If you can't

31:55

sell something for a dollar, or something wrong with you. William

31:58

Morl came to me and said, oh, you know, we'd love to published

32:00

your your next book, and I said fine, because

32:02

I didn't want to be I don't want to be in business.

32:05

Really. I wanted to get the work out, but

32:07

I didn't want to have to spend my time doing that.

32:09

When you think of Fellas, do you think of her as

32:12

someone who paved the way for women poets and poets

32:14

of color in America. But miss Wheatley

32:16

had to hear when she went to the market, and she's

32:18

in Boston, what she had to hear when

32:20

she went to the market. And she heard those black

32:23

women singing in the market, and she heard

32:25

the stories that they told, and she heard,

32:27

as we were talking about before, she heard a language

32:29

that that the white people who owned her, if

32:32

I can use that term, didn't know what they were

32:34

talking about. Her path

32:36

was led by some of those old ladies

32:39

in the market. So we don't know who leads

32:41

a path. That's why you walk together, children,

32:43

and don't you get weary. And once

32:45

we got out of slavery, we could go back

32:47

to doing what we want to. But you have to remember

32:49

that the poetry, which is actually

32:52

the poetry of the world, are the spirituals.

32:55

The enslaved created the music

32:57

that is still heard around the world.

33:00

The New York Times recently did an

33:02

article on Walt Whitman, and

33:05

I don't know why they called me, because I'm always

33:07

disappointing those people. And they said,

33:09

uh, you know, Walt Whitman is our first

33:12

poet, and we'd like for you to respond, And I

33:14

did respond. Walt Whitman was

33:16

not our first poet, Our first poet

33:18

was those women, particularly who

33:20

were in the field, who were singing songs, who

33:23

were putting a rhythm together, who were finding a way

33:25

to get up before light and cooking

33:27

a meal and putting something together

33:29

so that they could go out and pick cotton

33:32

or pick peanuts or whatever it is that

33:34

they were being expected to do and

33:36

come home at night and there be a meal there. They

33:39

were the first poets. And if we recall

33:41

Walt Whitman, you know, used to hang around

33:43

black people and then hanging around them,

33:45

whether it was in the hospital for Civil War and

33:47

all of that. That's what he heard, That's what

33:49

he learned something. And you get tired of that.

33:52

You get tired of white men stealing

33:54

from black people. You get tired of men

33:56

stealing from women. You get tired of that. But

33:58

how do you push a gun stir? What do you tell? I

34:01

don't know what you do. I know what I do

34:03

is that when I run into it, I said, you know you're

34:05

wrong. That's I

34:07

won't take that. I won't let that happen.

34:09

And I can't. But I know this. You can't say

34:11

foolishness in front of me without me

34:14

responding why are we constantly

34:16

changing our opinions of women like Fellis? We

34:19

change our opinion on everything. We change our

34:21

opinion because everybody grows, We've learned

34:23

a little more, We've paid a little more attention. And

34:25

it wasn't that Phillis Sweetley wasn't neglected

34:28

or anything. It's just the world kept changing

34:30

and changing, and now we have time to sit

34:32

down and say, well, what's going on here? When

34:34

did you first feel like people were taking you seriously

34:36

as a poet. I still try very hard

34:38

not to be bothered with thinking how people

34:41

take me. And I'm not good, I'm not friendly.

34:43

I don't really care what most people think about

34:45

most things. I just don't think it's my

34:47

job. That's not what I am.

34:50

I right. I hope people like it.

34:52

But if you start to be bothered with what people

34:54

think and how they think of you, it

34:57

will affect your work. It's so basic.

34:59

You know want that to happen. But it's

35:01

hard not to worry how people think about you,

35:03

how people receive you. In all fairness,

35:06

because I know a lot of famous people, and

35:08

the one thing that that you can see is that

35:11

it makes you crazy. If you take it seriously, you

35:14

know. So I go to my grocery store.

35:16

I know people, I go get my gut. I'm

35:18

not gonna let my life be taken away from me.

35:21

Is it your responsibility to his poetry as

35:23

activism or do you write the poems

35:25

for you? And if they happy to perform

35:27

the functions and social justice, that's

35:30

just what they do. I know I'm not going to change

35:32

the world. I know that, and I think I'm a pretty good

35:34

poet. But I know that I will never write

35:36

the poem that changes the world. So

35:39

I don't have to worry about that. I can write

35:41

a poem and enjoy writing it and enjoy reading

35:43

it and sharing it with people, because I know I'm

35:45

not going to change the world. But why are you so sure you're

35:47

not going to change the world? Because the world is too

35:50

stupid. It was a bad idea,

35:52

and I'm really glad that God doesn't call and

35:54

ask me, Nikki, what do you think you think I should

35:57

let earth continue? I'd have to be honest

35:59

is God. You know you can't allow to God, and so

36:01

you know it didn't work. So

36:03

that said, what's your advice for the next generation

36:06

of poets, particularly women

36:08

poets. There's no such thing as

36:10

a bad poem. You can make a

36:12

mistake mathematically speaking, and

36:15

everybody will will suffer. You know, if you make

36:17

a mistake, the building will fall down, or the

36:19

rocket will explode, or you

36:21

know, you have to drop, as they did recently,

36:24

the fuel out of the plane and bring it back. But

36:26

if you write a bad point, people read

36:28

and say, oh, it's bad point, and then a hundred

36:30

years from him, everybody's just, oh, it's brilliant.

36:36

We're very grateful to our guests. Author

36:39

and professor at the University of Maryland, Dr

36:41

Vincent Kretta, Chair of the English Department

36:43

and Interim Dean at the Graduate School at Howard University,

36:46

Dr Dania Williams, and renowned poet

36:48

and University Distinguished Professor at Virginia

36:50

Tech. Nikki Giovanni. Phil

36:52

As Sweetly is voiced by Ebony Booth. The

36:54

male voices in this episode, We're All done by

36:57

Jacob bon Eacle Pierce is hosted

36:59

and written by O Piazza, produced and directed

37:01

by me Anna Stump. Our executive

37:03

producers are Joe Piazza, Nikki Etre, Anna

37:05

Stump, and from Tribeca Studios Lea Sarbefe.

37:08

This episode was edited by Aaron Kaufman and

37:10

soundscaped by Anna Stump and Aaron Kaufman.

37:13

Our associate producer Emily Maronov was

37:15

also instrumental in putting this episode together.

37:18

Fact checking by Austin Thompson, researched

37:20

by Lizzie Jacobs. The Fierce theme is

37:22

by Hamilton Lighthouser and Anna Stump. Additional

37:24

music for this episode by Blue Dots Sessions and

37:27

by Aaron Kaufman. Our very

37:29

sincere thanks to mangesh Had Tichador for

37:31

making this series possible. And now

37:33

a special message for someone who needs to be mentioned

37:35

one more time, Nickyt,

37:38

thank you for everything. Sources

37:40

for this episode Poems on various subjects,

37:43

religious and moral by Phillis Wheatley, published

37:45

by Archibald Bell in London in seventeen seventy

37:47

three. Various publications mentioned

37:50

throughout the episode which published Phillis Wheaton's

37:52

poems and letters during her life. Phillis

37:54

Wheatley Biography of a Genius in Bondage

37:56

by Vincent Koretta. The Trials of Phillis

37:58

Wheatley, America's first Black poet, and her Encounters

38:01

with the Founding Fathers by Henry Lewis Gates, the

38:03

Poetry Foundation at Poetry Foundation

38:05

dot org, and the Phillis Wheatley Historical

38:07

Society at Philis desh Wheatly dot

38:10

org. Thanks so much for listening.

38:13

For more podcasts for My Heart Radio, visit the

38:15

I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or

38:17

wherever you listen to your favorite shows.