Letter from The Director: Phyllis Wheatley Peters, Founding Mother
Phillis Wheatley Peters, by Elizabeth Catlett, commissioned by Margaret Walker, bronze and wood (1973)
Recently, I visited Gunston Hall, the home of George Mason, the primary author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights and the Virginia Constitution. I went there to do a taped interview about Phillis Wheatley Peters, author of Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773), the first Black American to publish a book and, I would argue, a founding mother of this country. Filmmaker Leslie Askew, who is working on “Phillis and John,” a short documentary on the little-known love story of Phillis Wheatley and John Peters, asked me why I thought Phillis Wheatley Peters, forcibly brought to this country as an enslaved girl at the tender age of 7, was a founding mother and why she should be given an honorific that has generally been reserved for white men like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Mason.
My answer is unequivocal. Phillis Wheatley Peters should be given this recognition because she symbolizes what we understand in the twenty-first century as the urge toward liberation. In her tenuous and venerable position as a servant in the home of a Boston tailor, she had the gumption and courage to praise those who were fighting for liberation from British rule and to chastise those who fought for their own freedom and held others in bondage. She used her rare opportunity to excel in the study of the Bible, classical literature and Latin, to understand democratic principles, to embrace Christianity, and to experience the fervor of the Enlightenment movement. Phillis Wheatley Peters espoused the values of freedom, social justice, the agency and independence of women, the protection of children, and the resistance to oppression.
Phillis Wheatley Peters used the master’s tools to speak truth to power. Her example is evergreen as we in our times see those who want to denigrate the intellect of Black women, to take our books out of schools and libraries, to erase our history and culture, and cripple our ability to have agency over our bodies and progeny.
And here is Phillis, a woman who came to her power before this America was even officially birthed, daring us to stand firm in our insistence to prevail against these tyrannical actions. Yes, she is our founding mother for all times!
Joanne V. Gabbin
Executive Director
Wintergreen Women Writers Collective
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