YWCA Northeastern Massachusetts
107 Winter Street
Haverhill, MA 01830
Phone: 978.374.6121
TTY: 978.686.8840
Web: www.ywcahaverhill.org
SEE A GALLERY OF PHOTOS on INSTAGRAM #bostonblackhistory HONORING BLACK HISTORY MONTH IN BOSTON. WELL WORTH the CLICK! … See MoreSee Less
GOOGLE IS TAKING US on an amazing journey through the history of African American/Black dance, movies, and much more for BLACK HISTORY MONTH. (Click below where it says GOOGLE EARTH and then click on START EXPLORING) … See MoreSee Less
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Smalls … See MoreSee Less
IT’S BLACK HISTORY MONTH, a good time to recall the stories of the first Black people in the U.S.
Phillis Wheatley is the earliest known Black woman poet. (original birth-name unknown) She was born somewhere in West Africa in 1753. From the manifest of the ship that brought her here, we know: "Phillis was kidnapped at the age of eight and was taken to America where she was sold in Boston to the Wheatley family. Here she became the enslaved servant of her owner’s wife; Susanna Wheatley."
The origins of her name are a combination of the boat she had been sold from; the ‘Phillis’ and the owners’ family name ‘Wheatley.’
Unlike most slaves, the family that enslaved Phillis also educated her–in English, Greek and Latin. She wrote her first poem at aged 14, entitled ‘To the University of Cambridge, In New England.’
She was freed at age 20, and accompanied the son of the Wheatleys to London for his studies. She began to get her poems published, which would likely never happen in the U.S. In 1789, after her death at age 36, one of her poems about her plight as a slave was published by a London newspaper;
I, young in life, by seeming cruel fate,
Was snach’d from AFRIC’s fancy’d happy seat;
What pangs excruciating must molest,
What sorrows labour in my parents’ breast?
Steel’d was that soul and by no mis’ry mov’d
That from a father seiz’d his babe belove’d;
Such-such my case; and can I then but pray
Others may never feel tyrannic sway?
https://blackhistorymonth.org.uk/article/section/… … See MoreSee Less