As a teenager, Phillis Wheatley sat before 18 of Boston’s most powerful men, essentially on trial to prove her own mind belonged to her, that she was intelligent enough to have written her poetry. This deep dive explores the life of the first African American author to publish a book of poetry and the subversive codes she hid inside her art.

Kidnapped from West Africa and named after the slave ship that carried her, Wheatley was educated as a prodigy yet kept in intellectual quarantine from other enslaved people. When American publishers refused to believe she wrote her work, she defended her authorship, secured a London publisher, and won her freedom, only to face brutal economic isolation.

• The 1772 examination by luminaries including the governor and John Hancock
• Publishing “Poems on Various Subjects” in London in 1773 with the Countess of Huntingdon’s backing
• Emancipation that severed her financial safety net during the Revolutionary War economy
• Hidden solar imagery honoring her West African roots and referencing the enslaved poet Terence
• Her death in obscurity at 31, Jefferson’s dismissal, and her modern vindication