They stripped her n4ked at seven years old and called her property.
They stripped her n4ked at seven years old and called her property. A few years later, she would embarrass the men who believed Black people could never be intelligent. Her name was Phillis Wheatley. But even that name was stolen. “Phillis” came from the slave ship that carried her across the Atlantic. “Wheatley” came from the Boston family that bought her. Before America knew her as a poet, she was a terrified little Black girl ripped from Senegal and thrown into slavery before she even understood what slavery was. She arrived in Boston in 1761. Thin. Sick. Alone. On the auction block, enslavers examined her body like livestock. One man reportedly described her as suitable breeding stock. She was only a child. That is the brutality people try to soften when they talk casually about slavery. Children were not seen as children. They were investments. But something inside Phillis Wheatley refused to die. The Wheatley family noticed she learned quickly. Very quickly. Within months, she wa...