WEBVTT - Phillis Wheatley - The Letters 0:00:00.800 --> 0:00:04.960 My name is Jacqueesse Thomas, and you're listening to Black Lit, 0:00:05.640 --> 0:00:12.160 a podcast about Black literature and the stories behind the storytellers. 0:00:15.640 --> 0:00:19.080 When we talk about early African American literature, it's easy 0:00:19.120 --> 0:00:25.760 to focus on books, the first novels, the first published poets, etc. However, 0:00:25.880 --> 0:00:28.800 we now understand that the reality is much much broader. 0:00:29.440 --> 0:00:34.879 Black literature in early America existed in letters, newspapers, and 0:00:34.960 --> 0:00:39.040 even songs. So you have to look beyond the obvious, 0:00:39.800 --> 0:00:42.320 and in these spaces we find some of the most 0:00:42.400 --> 0:00:48.640 profound stories of resilience, connection, and self definition. It's the 0:00:48.680 --> 0:00:52.880 writings passed from hand to hand, stories whispered from one 0:00:52.920 --> 0:00:57.920 to another, and sometimes it's a friendship written in ink, 0:00:58.560 --> 0:01:03.680 held on to for decades, surviving all odds. One such 0:01:03.720 --> 0:01:07.800 story can be told in the letters between Philips, Sweetly 0:01:08.120 --> 0:01:13.839 and Overturn. Now, Phyllis wrote many, many letters to different people, 0:01:14.880 --> 0:01:17.880 but these letters, written over the course of six years, 0:01:18.800 --> 0:01:23.720 are very special. Their correspondence offers us a rear glipse 0:01:24.160 --> 0:01:30.040 into friendship, faith, and an intellectual exchange between two black 0:01:30.080 --> 0:01:36.000 women who are enslaved at the height of the Revolutionary War. 0:01:37.959 --> 0:01:42.240 I would never make a claim about a first African 0:01:42.280 --> 0:01:45.920 American anything in this period, because there's a lot of 0:01:46.440 --> 0:01:48.520 you know, oftentimes our ideas of oh, what is the 0:01:48.560 --> 0:01:52.440 first novel to be written or the first story, those 0:01:52.800 --> 0:01:57.160 are in flux and change often. One thing I would 0:01:57.200 --> 0:02:01.720 say for Black literature in general is that we can't 0:02:02.160 --> 0:02:05.600 understand Black literature if we focus just on books. You 0:02:05.680 --> 0:02:08.840 have to look to other print media. So much literature 0:02:08.880 --> 0:02:12.920 that's published in newspapers, for example, and we're thinking about 0:02:12.919 --> 0:02:15.480 even songs and broadsides. There's a lot of other places 0:02:15.480 --> 0:02:19.680 where African American literature happens that aren't books. Given how 0:02:19.880 --> 0:02:23.840 much the landscape for early African American literature has changed 0:02:23.880 --> 0:02:27.680 and shifted in the last couple of decades, the classes 0:02:27.720 --> 0:02:31.640 that I teach now just wouldn't be possible for undergrad 0:02:31.680 --> 0:02:34.799 me because I wouldn't have had the things to do them, 0:02:35.080 --> 0:02:37.239 I wouldn't have had access to the same texts, I 0:02:37.240 --> 0:02:41.400 wouldn't have had access to the same resources. Every you know, 0:02:41.480 --> 0:02:44.280 things are just different and changing all the time, and 0:02:44.320 --> 0:02:48.679 sometimes there's a new rediscovery of a piece that shifts 0:02:48.760 --> 0:02:51.240 how we teach and what we teach it with. So 0:02:52.160 --> 0:02:55.680 those are super, super exciting and one of the things 0:02:55.680 --> 0:02:58.280 that really kind of draws me to this field is 0:02:58.320 --> 0:03:02.520 that possibility. There's always possibility in the black archive. 0:03:03.720 --> 0:03:07.440 What is interesting and beautiful about these letters between these 0:03:07.480 --> 0:03:11.880 two black women, between these two slaves, to be exact, 0:03:12.919 --> 0:03:18.200 is that they share something beyond the ideas of survivor mode. 0:03:18.280 --> 0:03:21.799 They were building a sisterhood while the world was burning 0:03:22.800 --> 0:03:28.880 literally around them. The war wasn't some distant, unfathomable conflict. 0:03:29.680 --> 0:03:34.280 It was smoldering right outside of their front doors, impossible 0:03:34.320 --> 0:03:38.240 to ignore. But through all of this chaos, Phyllis and 0:03:38.480 --> 0:03:43.840 Uber kept writing, kept sharing, both very aware of the 0:03:43.840 --> 0:03:49.360 world around them, the community that they were building, the 0:03:49.400 --> 0:03:55.520 care for each other, and the importance of communicating. 0:03:56.720 --> 0:03:59.400 The closeness of their relationship. I think that really comes 0:03:59.440 --> 0:04:01.880 out of the less and when you contrast them with 0:04:01.960 --> 0:04:05.120 other letters she wrote, it's not that she doesn't say 0:04:05.160 --> 0:04:07.360 what she thinks in her letters. It's just that there's 0:04:07.400 --> 0:04:13.200 another dimension to that relationship that we don't get to 0:04:13.200 --> 0:04:20.760 see elsewhere. And it should suggest to us that she 0:04:20.960 --> 0:04:25.560 is not alone, that she has a what I call 0:04:25.600 --> 0:04:31.240 it a cohort, a community. That the idea that she 0:04:31.279 --> 0:04:33.520 could only have done this if she'd been isolated which 0:04:33.560 --> 0:04:36.640 was kind of standard in the literature for a long time, 0:04:37.600 --> 0:04:41.840 that she could only have been as studious and as 0:04:41.880 --> 0:04:46.520 much of a as conversant with Anglo American literary culture 0:04:46.720 --> 0:04:52.080 if she had not been part of a enslaved and 0:04:52.240 --> 0:04:56.919 African community. I think that's nonsense, Like why can't we 0:04:56.960 --> 0:04:59.560 imagine that she was code switching. Why can't we imagine 0:04:59.680 --> 0:05:04.039 that she had a whole range of audiences and interlocutors. 0:05:04.680 --> 0:05:06.360 And that's one of the things I want to convey, 0:05:06.400 --> 0:05:08.720 and how sensitive she is to who she's talking about 0:05:08.720 --> 0:05:11.920 and dealing with. We're talking about someone who has had 0:05:12.120 --> 0:05:15.800 a cosmopolitan experience. We have no idea what her life 0:05:15.920 --> 0:05:19.919 is like before she's eight, but many people who are 0:05:19.960 --> 0:05:24.000 in the slave trade have experience a lot of locations 0:05:24.080 --> 0:05:26.480 and are moved around a lot before they end up 0:05:26.480 --> 0:05:29.120 where they end up. And she's highly likely one of 0:05:29.120 --> 0:05:31.120 those people, even though she's only about eight years old 0:05:31.160 --> 0:05:33.480 when she gets to Boston, and Boston is a place 0:05:33.520 --> 0:05:37.520 where that's ten to fifteen percent African when she gets there, 0:05:37.640 --> 0:05:41.360 and there's a particularly been an upswing of importation, so 0:05:41.400 --> 0:05:43.839 there are a lot of enslaved people her age, and 0:05:43.920 --> 0:05:46.640 a lot of those people are from different parts of 0:05:46.720 --> 0:05:50.640 West Africa, and she knows that there are a lot 0:05:50.680 --> 0:05:52.920 of different ways to connect to people. And so rather 0:05:53.000 --> 0:05:56.640 than see her as having converted to a dominant culture, 0:05:56.800 --> 0:06:02.000 I see her as someone who has realized that culture 0:06:02.120 --> 0:06:05.960 is multiple and that there are different languages and she's 0:06:06.000 --> 0:06:10.000 adept at learning them. So I argue that the neoclassical 0:06:10.040 --> 0:06:13.080 literature is particularly important to her. And that's not instead 0:06:13.120 --> 0:06:15.640 of the Christian stuff, it's in addition to and in 0:06:15.720 --> 0:06:17.880 relationship to it. So if we think of those two 0:06:17.920 --> 0:06:21.640 things as languages that she's completely able to riff on 0:06:21.800 --> 0:06:24.440 so quickly, why would we think that she doesn't have 0:06:24.520 --> 0:06:27.600 others that don't necessarily come out in the poetry, but 0:06:27.680 --> 0:06:30.359 that we might get glimpses of in letters, or we 0:06:30.400 --> 0:06:33.240 might get glimpses of from knowing who she's talking to 0:06:33.279 --> 0:06:36.720 and where she was. So the political languages are others 0:06:36.800 --> 0:06:38.359 for me. So what does this have to do with 0:06:38.440 --> 0:06:42.440 obor isn't it interesting that they talk about their you 0:06:42.520 --> 0:06:46.320 get glimpses into their mutual friends. And it's certainly clear 0:06:46.480 --> 0:06:51.680 that Phyllis had traveled to Newport probably several times that 0:06:51.880 --> 0:06:54.320 and her first poem is published in the newspaper there, 0:06:54.440 --> 0:06:58.880 so there's some relationship between Newport and Boston and religious 0:06:58.880 --> 0:07:01.840 folks and others there. It's clear that she knows some 0:07:01.880 --> 0:07:05.040 of the people that Ober knows, and that they're aware 0:07:05.080 --> 0:07:07.640 that there are people who travel between Newport and Boston 0:07:07.680 --> 0:07:11.320 and Connecticut. So she's part of these wider black networks 0:07:11.360 --> 0:07:14.760 which are connected to the Wheatly's networks, and ministers and 0:07:14.840 --> 0:07:17.280 other folks you know who are referred to who carry 0:07:17.280 --> 0:07:21.960 the letters, mister Babcock's servant, Ebenezer Pemberton, people who were 0:07:22.000 --> 0:07:24.160 able to point to as being who they were. 0:07:25.200 --> 0:07:29.200 I definitely like to think about them as being in community. 0:07:29.400 --> 0:07:32.200 But even more than that, Like, what really interests me 0:07:32.520 --> 0:07:35.600 is the kind of there's a tension between the public 0:07:35.720 --> 0:07:39.760 and private. On the one hand, these letters between Uber 0:07:39.800 --> 0:07:43.320 Tanner and Phyllis Wheatley have this air of intimacy because 0:07:43.320 --> 0:07:46.400 it's in the genre of the letter, but then there's 0:07:46.440 --> 0:07:49.880 also this kind of public performative part of it, because 0:07:49.920 --> 0:07:54.360 there wasn't an expectation that this correspondence would just stay 0:07:54.440 --> 0:07:57.760 between two people. And so then I'm thinking, like, so, 0:07:57.840 --> 0:08:01.240 what were the real conversations like between Luthertanna and feel 0:08:01.280 --> 0:08:04.960 this movie, like, that's what I want to know. So anyway, 0:08:05.000 --> 0:08:08.000 that's kind of what I think about the relationship between 0:08:08.040 --> 0:08:10.600 the two, that there's some part of it that we've 0:08:10.640 --> 0:08:15.680 got to think about as an element of performativity, and 0:08:15.720 --> 0:08:17.960 then there's some part of it that's more intimate, and 0:08:18.040 --> 0:08:20.200 like I can't know which is which. 0:08:21.280 --> 0:08:24.640 The letters are an interesting glimpse into the American colonial 0:08:24.720 --> 0:08:30.720 landscape through the eyes of a friendship between two black 0:08:30.760 --> 0:08:35.440 women who are also enslaved at times. Phil's Leatly, who's 0:08:35.480 --> 0:08:40.040 based in Boston, and Obertanner, who is based in Newport. 0:08:40.080 --> 0:08:42.000 And what we find by way of their letters is 0:08:42.000 --> 0:08:46.640 that at various points they are made refugees. Boston is 0:08:46.679 --> 0:08:50.440 under siege, so Latly has to leave in seventeen seventy five. 0:08:51.080 --> 0:08:54.200 Newport will be under siege by the end of seventeen 0:08:54.520 --> 0:08:58.960 seventy six, and uber China has to leave Newport. So 0:08:59.040 --> 0:09:04.760 I think the Revolutionary War is a big deal to them, 0:09:05.320 --> 0:09:08.400 especially since they're living in places where the Revolutionary War 0:09:08.559 --> 0:09:11.360 is happening. It's not an abstract idea, it's not a 0:09:11.360 --> 0:09:15.640 theoretical problem, it's a real life problem. I would also 0:09:15.720 --> 0:09:20.839 say that what is important is the friendship as they articulated, 0:09:21.320 --> 0:09:26.040 because there are a number of stories, a number of 0:09:26.120 --> 0:09:30.600 answers to questions that we just can't get because they 0:09:30.600 --> 0:09:33.160 already know one another, So questions like how do they 0:09:33.240 --> 0:09:36.280 need I have no idea, and any of the other 0:09:36.400 --> 0:09:40.559 kind of background questions, the letters don't provide answers to that. 0:09:40.600 --> 0:09:42.520 But what the letters do do is kind of dig 0:09:42.600 --> 0:09:45.319 into their friendship. 0:09:46.440 --> 0:09:48.520 There is a theory that they meant on the passage 0:09:48.520 --> 0:09:53.760 coming over, which would have solidified their connection. John Wheatley 0:09:53.880 --> 0:09:57.360 was a merchant by trade. The two families could have 0:09:57.400 --> 0:10:02.120 crossed paths at some point, a Newport, or any other 0:10:02.240 --> 0:10:06.920 number of possibilities. The mystery on how their friendship was 0:10:06.960 --> 0:10:13.480 initially formed will remain just that a mystery, but the 0:10:13.559 --> 0:10:16.679 sentiment and the words she chose to send to Uber 0:10:17.679 --> 0:10:22.040 can be felt and are meaningful. Considering there was a 0:10:22.120 --> 0:10:27.760 war going on and all of the other circumstances, there 0:10:27.880 --> 0:10:33.400 was definitely a sense to write with sincerity and intention. 0:10:34.679 --> 0:10:39.640 On July nineteenth, seventeen seventy two, Wheatly writes. 0:10:40.480 --> 0:10:44.920 Dear Uber, I have received your kind letter, and I'm 0:10:44.960 --> 0:10:48.840 glad to hear of your welfare. I have been indisposed 0:10:48.840 --> 0:10:53.040 for some time past, but through divine goodness, I am 0:10:53.120 --> 0:10:57.240 somewhat better at present. I hope the correspondence between us 0:10:57.280 --> 0:11:01.600 will continue, which may have the happy effect of improving 0:11:01.640 --> 0:11:05.640 our mutual friendship. Till we meet in the region of 0:11:05.720 --> 0:11:10.600 consummate blessedness. Let us endeavor, by the assistance of divine grace, 0:11:11.559 --> 0:11:14.440 to live the life, and we shall die the death 0:11:14.600 --> 0:11:20.240 of the righteous. May this be a happy case. I am, 0:11:21.080 --> 0:11:24.200 dear friend, your affectionate sister. 0:11:27.200 --> 0:11:29.680 This phrase draws from numbers twenty three to ten in 0:11:29.720 --> 0:11:34.280 the Bible, where Balam expresses a desire to die the 0:11:34.320 --> 0:11:39.760 death of the righteous. Wheatley uses this reference to emphasize 0:11:39.800 --> 0:11:45.400 her aspiration for a virtuous life leading to a blessed afterlife. 0:11:46.120 --> 0:11:50.520 She expresses her appreciation for Tanner's friendship and emphasizes the 0:11:50.520 --> 0:11:56.040 importance of maintaining their correspondence to strengthen their bond. She 0:11:56.120 --> 0:12:00.360 reflects on her recent illness and conveys her hope that 0:12:01.040 --> 0:12:06.480 with divine assistance, they will lead righteous lives together and 0:12:06.559 --> 0:12:11.720 ultimately attain eternal happiness, and we shall die the death 0:12:12.320 --> 0:12:18.320 of the righteous. This letter highlights Wheatley's deep spirituality, her 0:12:18.440 --> 0:12:22.840 relationship with the Bible and the value she placed on 0:12:23.200 --> 0:12:27.120 enduring friendships. They wrote to hold on to each other, 0:12:28.080 --> 0:12:31.200 to carve out a space where their voices mattered. And 0:12:31.240 --> 0:12:35.280 we know that it mattered because Uber cherished this exchange. 0:12:35.280 --> 0:12:37.920 She held on to it for nearly half a century 0:12:38.760 --> 0:12:42.640 because they were important to her, and perhaps she also 0:12:42.720 --> 0:12:46.160 knew how important they would be for others in the future. 0:12:47.160 --> 0:12:48.600 For us, the. 0:12:48.679 --> 0:12:53.120 Letters go from seventeen seventy two to seventeen seventy nine, 0:12:53.520 --> 0:12:58.760 and Ubertanna holds on to the letters until the early 0:12:58.800 --> 0:13:02.200 eighteen thirties, until right before she dies, and then she 0:13:02.200 --> 0:13:05.120 gives them to her pastor's wife. And I think that 0:13:05.240 --> 0:13:07.880 that's an important kind of testament to the relationship that 0:13:07.920 --> 0:13:12.920 she has weekly and also her own sense of her 0:13:12.960 --> 0:13:18.120 legacy and wanting to make sure that Wheatly's story is 0:13:18.120 --> 0:13:23.240 told alongside her own. So she hands off the letters 0:13:23.280 --> 0:13:27.000 to her pastor's wife, Kavin eith Feacher, who thirty years 0:13:27.080 --> 0:13:30.960 later and he is eighteen sixty three, gives them to 0:13:31.280 --> 0:13:35.319 her nephew in law, who then gives them the Charles Dean, 0:13:35.679 --> 0:13:38.600 who works for the Massachusetts Historical Society, which is why 0:13:39.080 --> 0:13:41.880 we can read the letters today. 0:13:42.960 --> 0:13:47.400 This was more than just her friendship, more than even sisterhood. 0:13:48.600 --> 0:13:54.439 This was legacy building. Wheatley wasn't just writing to connect. 0:13:54.640 --> 0:13:57.960 She was playing chess in a world that tried to 0:13:58.120 --> 0:14:02.920 keep her off the She sent poems to people in 0:14:03.080 --> 0:14:07.400 power not just because she believed in them, but because 0:14:07.440 --> 0:14:11.320 she wanted to be seen. She knew the value of 0:14:11.360 --> 0:14:17.400 her work. She knew that her words had the strength 0:14:17.520 --> 0:14:23.120 of immortality. She knew she was worthy, and she very 0:14:23.120 --> 0:14:24.520 well knew the game. 0:14:25.200 --> 0:14:27.400 Well, why did she choose to write Washington? She could 0:14:27.440 --> 0:14:31.240 have created poetry and she could have wrote to other people. 0:14:31.240 --> 0:14:36.200 Why did she choose to write the Secretary of North America? 0:14:36.800 --> 0:14:39.480 Who was this dude England sit Over to be like 0:14:40.160 --> 0:14:43.240 the person responsible for all of North America? Why did 0:14:43.320 --> 0:14:48.040 she use George Whitfield's rhetoric Earth in seventeen seventy to 0:14:48.080 --> 0:14:51.560 write one of her most popular poems and then specifically 0:14:51.560 --> 0:14:54.720 take that poem and send it to the Countess of Huntington, 0:14:55.080 --> 0:14:57.080 who is in the Hastens in order to kind of 0:14:57.120 --> 0:15:00.040 get a financial beneficiary and to get someone she She 0:15:00.200 --> 0:15:06.080 had rhetorical goals, aims, and desires and strategy, so a 0:15:06.080 --> 0:15:08.520 lot of us think when she writes these people and 0:15:08.760 --> 0:15:10.440 you know, some of these people are slave owners, and 0:15:10.480 --> 0:15:14.480 she's not saying anything about slavery. It's all about like Christianity. 0:15:15.040 --> 0:15:17.720 I think that a lot of it was her trying 0:15:17.760 --> 0:15:20.800 to get herself in front of people who she felt 0:15:20.880 --> 0:15:24.280 had some power, right, and we kind of knew. I 0:15:24.400 --> 0:15:26.800 was thinking about how power is going to be played out, 0:15:27.080 --> 0:15:30.360 whether or not England was in control of North America, 0:15:30.440 --> 0:15:32.400 or whether or not the Americans will be in control 0:15:32.440 --> 0:15:35.760 of North America, whomever. Right, she wanted to put herself 0:15:36.200 --> 0:15:39.120 in front of those people, perhaps that she would be 0:15:39.200 --> 0:15:42.400 the example, right, you know, an African person willing to 0:15:42.440 --> 0:15:45.640 be part of the colonial American society, part of the 0:15:45.680 --> 0:15:49.560 American society post revolution and one vein but also too 0:15:49.600 --> 0:15:51.720 in this sense that you know, she felt that she 0:15:51.840 --> 0:15:55.840 had something to say, not necessarily for those people at 0:15:55.880 --> 0:15:57.440 that particular time, but for us. 0:15:57.560 --> 0:15:57.760 Right. 0:15:57.880 --> 0:16:00.600 And one of the ways that we think about if 0:16:00.640 --> 0:16:06.240 African American rhetorical practices have been in part uniquely signified 0:16:06.320 --> 0:16:10.200 to or connected to abolitionism, right, one of the most 0:16:10.200 --> 0:16:13.240 important twos of abolitionism is that you don't write simply 0:16:13.480 --> 0:16:16.840 for yourself to be free, but for the next generation 0:16:16.920 --> 0:16:19.960 of people to live in a more prosperous society. So 0:16:20.360 --> 0:16:23.280 my thinking too is that she's trying to define a 0:16:23.360 --> 0:16:27.680 moral authority that would far exceed her temporer time on earth. 0:16:27.960 --> 0:16:31.320 She wanted to leave a lasting rhetorical and written record 0:16:31.800 --> 0:16:34.840 to how she tried to how she labored, what her 0:16:34.920 --> 0:16:37.720 vocation was. And so I think that she, like so 0:16:37.840 --> 0:16:41.320 many Africans in this particular period, so many African Americans 0:16:41.320 --> 0:16:44.600 in this particular period, began to kind of think about 0:16:44.840 --> 0:16:47.479 ways in which they can produce written records. 0:16:47.800 --> 0:16:50.920 In fact, Phillis Whitey only published one volume, a forward you, 0:16:50.960 --> 0:16:53.360 but she tried to publish the second one, but you know, 0:16:53.760 --> 0:16:55.640 there was a little thing like the revolution, that war, 0:16:55.720 --> 0:17:00.800 that kind of you know. And so when shed an 0:17:00.840 --> 0:17:04.720 advertisement for that second volume, she listed a table of contents, 0:17:05.040 --> 0:17:07.680 and in her table of contents it was a series 0:17:07.720 --> 0:17:10.359 of letters that she was including as part of her 0:17:10.400 --> 0:17:13.720 second volume. So that tells me that when Phyllis Wheatley 0:17:14.520 --> 0:17:17.159 was doing her letter correspondence, there was some part of 0:17:17.200 --> 0:17:20.080 it where she was thinking these letters might be for 0:17:20.240 --> 0:17:23.840 public consumption. And so then that makes me think, how 0:17:23.840 --> 0:17:26.879 does one do that, Like, how do you write a 0:17:26.960 --> 0:17:31.840 letter and balance the private and the public. 0:17:32.720 --> 0:17:36.400 Not by choice, but she always had two audiences in mind, 0:17:36.920 --> 0:17:41.160 one the white people who might publish her in two 0:17:41.840 --> 0:17:46.240 the black people who would truly understand. And so, like 0:17:46.359 --> 0:17:51.199 every great poet, she wrote with layered texts, with words 0:17:51.200 --> 0:17:53.600 that would carry the truth for those who needed it 0:17:54.280 --> 0:17:56.600 while still being respectable. 0:17:57.040 --> 0:18:00.080 African American people have at least have always had to 0:18:00.119 --> 0:18:03.159 be speaking to at least two audiences right trying to 0:18:03.200 --> 0:18:07.280 think about their identity themselves, especially if other black people 0:18:07.280 --> 0:18:09.560 will be reading it. They're thinking about that particular audience, 0:18:09.800 --> 0:18:13.680 but they're also concerning themselves with their survival life line. 0:18:18.600 --> 0:18:23.600 You are listening to Black lit when they say that 0:18:23.640 --> 0:18:27.200 the Bible was used to keep black folks in chains, 0:18:27.440 --> 0:18:32.480 but Phyllis flipped it back on them. She didn't swallow 0:18:32.560 --> 0:18:37.280 the version of Christianity that said know your place. She 0:18:37.400 --> 0:18:42.199 read deeper, looked harder, and found her own faith, a 0:18:42.280 --> 0:18:45.040 faith that called slavery what it was. 0:18:45.680 --> 0:18:47.960 And in seventeen seventy four, for instance, she wrote a 0:18:48.040 --> 0:18:52.680 letter to Samson Acum, who is a Native American Presbyterian 0:18:52.760 --> 0:18:56.040 minister who also goes to London prior to Weekly and 0:18:56.080 --> 0:18:59.480 he'd written about the treatment of enslaved Africans, and she 0:18:59.560 --> 0:19:02.359 writes him alert and says, thank you for your advocacy 0:19:02.359 --> 0:19:04.960 for black people. And she says that everything I write, 0:19:04.960 --> 0:19:08.240 and of course I'm paraphrasing and summarizing here, but she says, 0:19:08.280 --> 0:19:10.399 everything I write, I do not for their hurt, but 0:19:10.480 --> 0:19:13.880 to convince them of the strange ascertainty of their actions 0:19:13.880 --> 0:19:17.400 and conducts, which is diametrically opposite. 0:19:17.560 --> 0:19:22.080 In this letter, Wheatley eloquently critiques the hypocrisy of those 0:19:22.160 --> 0:19:28.000 who advocate for liberty while oppressing others, drawing parallels between 0:19:28.040 --> 0:19:32.400 the plight of enslaved Africans and the Israelites in Egypt. 0:19:33.600 --> 0:19:40.560 She writes, for in every human breast God has implanted 0:19:40.600 --> 0:19:45.760 a principle which we call love of freedom. It is 0:19:45.800 --> 0:19:51.399 impatient of oppression and pants for deliverance. And by the 0:19:51.480 --> 0:19:56.160 leave of our modern Egyptians, I will assert that the 0:19:56.200 --> 0:20:01.840 same principle lives in us. God grants deliverance in his 0:20:02.080 --> 0:20:07.240 own way and time, and get him honor upon all 0:20:07.320 --> 0:20:12.359 those whose avarice impels them to countenance and help forward 0:20:12.400 --> 0:20:18.080 the calamities of their fellow creatures. This I desire not 0:20:18.240 --> 0:20:22.159 for their hurts, but to convince them of the strange 0:20:22.240 --> 0:20:27.399 absurdity of their conduct, whose words and actions are so 0:20:27.600 --> 0:20:33.439 diametrically opposite, how well the cry for liberty and the 0:20:33.440 --> 0:20:38.439 reverse disposition of their exercise of oppressive power over others 0:20:38.520 --> 0:20:42.920 degree I humbly think it does not require the penetration 0:20:43.480 --> 0:20:48.320 of philosopher to determine. 0:20:48.560 --> 0:20:53.480 So therefore, she's very mindful that people are using Christianity, 0:20:53.640 --> 0:20:56.520 using faith to say that African people should be enslaved, 0:20:56.560 --> 0:20:59.040 that they need to be controlled, that they're violent xyz. 0:20:59.480 --> 0:21:01.439 And she said that I don't see this in the 0:21:01.480 --> 0:21:04.640 literature that I'm reading about God. I don't see this right. 0:21:04.640 --> 0:21:08.960 And thus she's revising that narrative about how she's assessing 0:21:09.000 --> 0:21:11.159 her faith. And she goes on, I think with that 0:21:11.200 --> 0:21:14.639 particular perspective, which I think would make her feel that 0:21:14.680 --> 0:21:17.600 she's the one who's in the superior position, that she's 0:21:17.680 --> 0:21:21.160 the one who has been author to offer an education 0:21:21.600 --> 0:21:25.199 and to moralize, if you will, people who are less 0:21:25.680 --> 0:21:27.800 learned on the tenets of Christianity. 0:21:28.440 --> 0:21:30.960 Isn't it interesting that she gets political in that wonderful 0:21:31.040 --> 0:21:33.199 letter which she talks about the hypocrisy of of the 0:21:33.240 --> 0:21:35.240 modern Egyptians, and who is she talking about it? She's 0:21:35.240 --> 0:21:37.320 talking about the British. Who are the modern Egyptians of 0:21:37.400 --> 0:21:40.560 the British, of the Americans? Are they both like that? 0:21:40.760 --> 0:21:43.560 We only have it because somebody chose to take it 0:21:43.600 --> 0:21:45.400 out of her letter and put it in the newspapers 0:21:45.440 --> 0:21:48.159 where it gets reprinted. But that shows us so we 0:21:48.240 --> 0:21:50.760 have no idea. She may have written dozens or hundreds 0:21:50.800 --> 0:21:53.160 of letters that we don't have right or said different 0:21:53.160 --> 0:21:56.080 things to different people. She's trying things out. She doesn't 0:21:56.080 --> 0:21:57.880 know what's going to happen next, who's going to win 0:21:57.920 --> 0:21:59.720 the war, and all these things. And so this is 0:21:59.760 --> 0:22:03.320 the wind into her practice all the way through, from 0:22:03.359 --> 0:22:05.679 the beginning, all the way to the end. And so 0:22:05.960 --> 0:22:09.280 often we've wanted to say, oh, she's she throws in 0:22:09.320 --> 0:22:11.680 her lot with the Patriots and things don't work out 0:22:11.720 --> 0:22:14.320 for her in its drag, or she has these kinds 0:22:14.359 --> 0:22:16.520 of ideas. This is what she thinks about white people, 0:22:16.560 --> 0:22:18.560 or this is what she thinks about the patriots, or 0:22:18.560 --> 0:22:20.680 this is what she thinks about Christianity, like as if 0:22:20.680 --> 0:22:23.680 she's not someone who's like saying different things to different people, 0:22:23.760 --> 0:22:26.320 and it's evolving depending on what she thinks is possible, 0:22:26.320 --> 0:22:29.440 and she doesn't know what's going to happen next. It's 0:22:29.440 --> 0:22:32.840 because we know so little that the chronology is and 0:22:32.880 --> 0:22:36.160 are missing so much, and the life is so relatively short, right, 0:22:36.560 --> 0:22:40.000 that the chronology is important. And it's actually the paying 0:22:40.040 --> 0:22:42.879 attention to that where we can see her making decisions 0:22:43.440 --> 0:22:46.119 and choosing to do certain things at certain times in 0:22:46.160 --> 0:22:49.200 certain situations. And for me, that proves both that how 0:22:49.240 --> 0:22:52.160 deliberate she is and how creative she is, but also 0:22:52.160 --> 0:22:53.159 how political she is. 0:22:53.760 --> 0:22:58.560 And Wheatley wasn't alone in this fight. Black writers, preachers, 0:22:58.640 --> 0:23:03.359 and thinkers were flipping the script everywhere, challenging these so 0:23:03.520 --> 0:23:05.639 called men of God at every turn. 0:23:06.040 --> 0:23:08.439 That's why the nineteenth century looks like it look. And 0:23:08.520 --> 0:23:10.880 slavery would come to an end in the eighteen sixties 0:23:11.119 --> 0:23:14.200 in part because per slavery advocates would be the members 0:23:14.240 --> 0:23:16.960 of Congress and all these other people, but they would 0:23:17.040 --> 0:23:21.520 continuously use religion. Right as the two suggest that African 0:23:21.520 --> 0:23:24.200 people were enslave. But you have so many African American 0:23:24.200 --> 0:23:27.040 people and some I guess you know Anglo American people 0:23:27.119 --> 0:23:30.120 writing at the time as well, would you know challenge 0:23:30.160 --> 0:23:32.359 against that and say that you know the way that 0:23:32.440 --> 0:23:35.760 they see faith, Christianity or Islam, because Islam is very 0:23:35.800 --> 0:23:38.320 important in early America too. The way that they are 0:23:38.359 --> 0:23:40.920 seeing these faith kind of the way that they read them, 0:23:41.040 --> 0:23:44.520 would suggest that slavery shouldn't be a part of God's children. 0:23:44.920 --> 0:23:49.320 Wheatley wasn't begging for approval. She was teaching and holding 0:23:49.400 --> 0:23:53.200 up a mirror, making them see their own contradictions. And 0:23:53.400 --> 0:23:56.080 it is in that act that she reclaimed her power. 0:23:56.560 --> 0:24:00.119 The letters feel deeply personal, but they weren't meant to 0:24:00.160 --> 0:24:04.960 be hidden. Back then, letters weren't private like text messages 0:24:05.000 --> 0:24:09.119 are today. They passed through hands and were copied and 0:24:09.160 --> 0:24:14.120 were sometimes even published. Phyllis knew this. She expected her 0:24:14.119 --> 0:24:17.320 words to last, and. 0:24:17.280 --> 0:24:19.560 I think as of right now, what makes the friendship 0:24:19.600 --> 0:24:27.240 important is that currently the only documented by way of 0:24:27.600 --> 0:24:35.600 letters friendship between two black women who were also enslaved. 0:24:38.280 --> 0:24:41.760 Uber didn't just hold on to Phyllis's letters. She made 0:24:41.800 --> 0:24:45.400 sure that they survived so that we could read them today. 0:24:46.280 --> 0:24:50.040 That's the thing about black joy. It persists. Even in 0:24:50.040 --> 0:24:53.000 the eighteenth century, when the world told them that they 0:24:53.040 --> 0:24:59.640 were nothing, Phyllis and Uber built something undeniable. They wrote 0:24:59.680 --> 0:25:08.440 themsel into history. In history for once held on to them. 0:25:08.600 --> 0:25:11.160 Special thanks to all of the guests on today's episode 0:25:11.240 --> 0:25:16.120 in order that you heard their voices. Bridget Fielder, David Wallsheiser, 0:25:16.840 --> 0:25:21.640 Cassie Smith, Tara a Bidam, Elima Shabaz reading the Letters 0:25:21.680 --> 0:25:25.200 by Phillip Sweetley and Don Holmes. 0:25:27.560 --> 0:25:28.960 Black Lit is a. 0:25:28.920 --> 0:25:32.399 Black Effect original series in partnership with I Heart Media. 0:25:32.880 --> 0:25:36.480 Is written and created by myself Jack Queise Thomas and 0:25:36.840 --> 0:25:41.320 executive produced alongside Dolly s Bishop. Chanelle Collins is the 0:25:41.400 --> 0:25:45.920 director of Production, Head of Talent Nicole Spence, writer producer 0:25:46.000 --> 0:25:50.280 Jason Torres, Our researcher and producer is Jabari Davis, and 0:25:50.400 --> 0:25:54.520 the mix and sound design is by the humble Duane Crawford. 0:25:55.600 --> 0:25:58.200 Gratitude is an action, so I have to give praise 0:25:58.240 --> 0:26:00.480 to those who took the time out to write review. 0:26:00.680 --> 0:26:04.040 Please keep sharing and we will promise to bring more 0:26:04.119 --> 0:26:12.280 writers and greater episodes to you. Also, if you're looking 0:26:12.320 --> 0:26:15.240