by Roger Crain

Created on: September 18, 2010   Last Updated: November 02, 2010

Why is free speech the root of all freedom?  Born in 1753 in an area in west Africa between Gambia and Ghana, Phillis Wheatley arrived in America eight years later as a slave and was sold on the auction block to a wealthy Bostonian and merchant, John Wheatley.  Phillis was named after the slave ship, The Phillis, which brought her to the Boston harbor and where John Wheatley made his timely purchase as a bequest for his wife, Susanna.  This was fifteen years before American independence and thirty years before the ratification of the U. S. Constitution, a document which helped to further define the freedoms that Americans have long since cherished.

Phillis began her education by being tutored by John Wheatley's 18-year-old daughter, Mary.  With remarkable dexterity and ease, Phillis took to the learning of her new language and culture with the eagerness that befitted any American of privilege.  Thus, after showing significant progress, she began to compose verse and prose about her adoptive country.  It was also at the age of eight that she began to study Greek and Latin; and by the age of twelve, she was reading the Greek and Latin classics and extremely difficult portions of the Bible. 

Even though her poems received notable recognition, she had difficulty finding a home for her work in America, but through the efforts of her owners and their connection in England, Phillis Wheatley became the first African American published poet. 

The themes of her work of God, death and the struggle of black people increased her popularity as an American poet, while the publication of the poem on the death of the Reverend George Whitfield ensured her a place in that pantheon of American literature.

Even though Phillis Wheatley only lived for thirty-three short years, she left a treasure trove of published works in the finest literary tradition.  But before she died in 1784, she would meet and marry a free black man and together they would crusade for the freedom of the American slave.

Another remarkable black woman who would receive a vision of God to start her underground railroad was none other than Sojourner Truth.  Born Isabella Baumfree in Swartekill, New York, she would endure the inhuman conditions of northern slavery.  Consequently, she would lead hordes of her people out of bondage to the promised land of the north, being spurred on because of that vision, that beckoning, she purportedly had

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