A Wolof girl who was captured and enslaved as a young child, Phillis Wheatley was adopted by a Boston couple who came to treat her like their own daughter. Unlike most enslaved people, she received a formal education and became the first Black poet to be published in the United States. Due to the racism of the world in which she lived, Wheatley was treated as an extraordinary exhibit and even brought on tour to England.
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Phillis Wheatley Character Timeline in Stamped from the Beginning
The timeline below shows where the character Phillis Wheatley appears in Stamped from the Beginning. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 8: Black Exhibits
In 1772, a group of white men from Boston approach a 19-year-old enslaved woman, Phillis Wheatley, demanding to know if she is the true author of the poetry published under her...
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At 15, Wheatley writes a poem entitled “To the University of Cambridge,” in which she expresses her dream...
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Kendi writes that Phillis Wheatley is one of many so-called “barbarians” exposed to assimilationist education and training only to be...
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...a University of Pennsylvania professor named Benjamin Rush anonymously publishes a pamphlet that cites Phillis Wheatley as an example of Black “genius” and argues that all the negative traits associated with...
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The publication of Wheatley’s poems in 1773 is a massive event in London, and when she arrives in England...
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