Phillis Wheatley: From Africa to America’s First Published Black Poet
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 4 March 2026
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, Phillis Wheatley was brought from Africa to Boston as a child and enslaved. Within a few years, she was reading classical literature and writing poetry that would be published in 1773 in Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral.
Leslie Johnson of The American Village revisits Phillis Wheatley’s life, her poetry on slavery and faith, and the uneasy place she held in a nation demanding liberty while denying hers.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.5 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:14.2 | This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. |
| 0:21.8 | And to search for the Our American Stories podcast, go to the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, |
| 0:26.8 | or wherever you get your podcast. |
| 0:29.3 | The definition of an anagram is a word or phrase or written work that can be formed by |
| 0:35.0 | rearranging the letters of another. |
| 0:36.8 | And one good example is on being brought from Africa to America, written in 1768. |
| 0:44.3 | Here to read this poem and tell the story of the remarkable woman behind the hand that wrote it, Phyllis Wheatley, is Leslie. |
| 0:52.3 | Take it away, Leslie. |
| 0:56.3 | "'Twas mercy brought me from my pagan land, taught my benighted soul to understand that there |
| 1:01.5 | is a God, that there is a savior too, once I redemption, neither sought nor new. Some view |
| 1:07.2 | our sable race with scornful eye. Their color is a diabolic dye. Remember Christians, |
| 1:12.9 | Negroes, Black as Cain, may be refined and joined the angelic train. |
| 1:21.2 | There was another gentleman, a scholar who actually, he was a fan of anagrams, and he went back and |
| 1:26.6 | reeve evaluated that poem and got a |
| 1:28.5 | completely different message from the one that seemingly is presented to you upon first reading |
| 1:34.4 | it. Because sometimes depending on who the person is that reads it, you may get different messages. |
| 1:39.8 | Same can we said of you and me. Hail, brethren in Christ, have ye forgotten God's word? |
| 1:45.0 | Scriptures teach us that bondage is wrong. |
| 1:48.0 | His own greedy kin sold Joseph into slavery. |
| 1:51.0 | Is there no balm in Gilead? |
... |
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