October 17th 2023.
The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture has acquired a historic collection of artifacts to shed new light on the life and literary influence of Phillis Wheatley Peters, including a rare and exciting four-page manuscript of a poem “Ocean” written in her own hand.
Phillis Wheatley Peters was born in West Africa and was captured and sold into slavery at a young age. Despite this, she became the first African American to publish a book of poetry, the 1773 release of her “Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral” in London.
The collection includes thirty items, six of which were published during her lifetime. Highlights include an autograph manuscript of the 70-line dramatic poem “Ocean”, an issue of The Arminian Magazine featuring the 20-line poem “On the Death of a Child, Five Years of Age”, and a hardcover edition of The Poems of Phillis Wheatley.
Kevin Young, the Andrew W. Mellon Director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, said of Wheatley Peters’ poetry: “Phillis Wheatley Peters’s poetry brought her renown in abolitionist circles and presented as proof of the humanity of those of African descent and the inhumanity of slavery. Scholars continue to parse through her work to determine when and where she posed resistance to slavery; her poem ‘On Being Brought from Africa to America’ is considered to be a chastisement of slavery to the millions of white Americans undergoing the religious revival movement known as ‘The Great Awakening.’ This must have pricked Thomas Jefferson’s conscience, for his 1785 publication of Notes on the State of Virginia dismissed Wheatley Peters’s talent as coming from religion and religious training rather than intellect.”
The collection also includes a hardcover edition of Phillis Wheatley : A Critical Attempt and a Bibliography of Her Writings, translated into English from the original German, and a booklet published by the Phillis Wheatley Club of Waycross, Georgia in 1930 containing a biography of the poet and correspondence between Wheatley Peters and George Washington, including a poem she sent him, “His Excellency General Washington.”
Angela Tate, curator of women’s history at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, noted that the collection provides a glimpse of Wheatley Peters as a poet, icon, and woman. One of the most interesting items is a 1783 poem published under her married name, Phillis Peters, which is especially important because it is not presented as Mrs. John Peters.
The publication of her poems by the AME Church and a biography by the Phillis Wheatley Club in the early 20th century are the only works in the collection published by Black printers. The biography published by the Phillis Wheatley Club was especially important because it documented the educational work of Black clubwomen and the role Black women played as historians of Black life and culture.
Selected items from the collection can be viewed online through the Searchable Museum website, and plans to display these new acquisitions in the museum are in the works. Currently, Wheatley Peters is recognized in the Paradox of Liberty display in the Slavery and Freedom exhibition with a statue and a copy of Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral.
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