The Boston poet has long been recognized as the first person of African descent in North America to publish a book.

Kidnapped from an unknown location in Africa as a child and put aboard a slave ship to America, Phillis Wheatley arrived at Boston in July 1761. The wealthy evangelical merchant John Wheatley and his ...

NEW YORK (AP) — The author of a new biography of Phillis Wheatley, one of the country's first major poets, has received a $50,000 history award. David Waldstreicher's “The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley: ...

This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated. NEW YORK (AP) — The author of a new ...

When Phillis Wheatley published her debut collection of poems in 1773, she expressed her gratitude to the Countess of Huntingdon, to whom the young writer dedicated her book. In a letter to the ...

Phillis Wheatley was about 7 in 1761 when she endured the Middle Passage. During her two-month journey she watched a quarter of her fellows perish and thrown in the sea. Once in America, her owners, a ...