Month: February 2010

The Poetry of Phillis Wheatley

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African-American poet Phillis Wheatley was influenced by another poet of the eighteenth century, and her own writing influences readers today. Wheatley read extensively from the work of Alexander Pope, who translated Homer and was a popular English poet. Imitating Pope’s style, Wheatley uses Greek and Roman mythology in many of her poems. The muse, or spirit which is supposed to guide the poet, appears often in her work. Wheatley’s poems are widely criticized for their failure to condemn slavery, but her writings are still influential. She is America’s first African-American and second female poet. Phillis Wheatley inspires both African-Americans and women today through her proven survival in a predominately white, male-dominated society.

Although she never condemns slavery, and is sometimes accused of advocating for it, Phillis Wheatley’s poems demonstrate her belief in her race’s potential. In “On Being Brought from Africa to America,” she writes that her race “may be refined and join the angelic train.” By the word refined she means not only that slaves can enter heaven as whites can, but also that they have the capacity to learn. Slaves can only become educated with the help of God, and the theme of faith also appears in this poem. Wheatley’s devotion to God is evident. She became a Christian after coming to America and expresses her joy at finding God, “once I redemption neither saw nor knew.” She rejoices in discovering her faith, believing that God views her race as equal to whites.

Phillis Wheatley’s thankfulness at being brought to America is unusual for someone in slavery. Her tone, however, is triumphant, since she believes she will go to heaven once the troubles of life are over. America is the land that introduced her to this belief so she expresses gratitude. She writes, “T'was mercy brought me from my Pagan Land.” Although Wheatley is conveying the image of the contented slave, she does so not because she is happy to be considered inferior to whites, but because slavery brought her to God.

Libraries in Early America

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Today’s Americans take the ability to freely check out books and other materials from their local libraries for granted. The opportunity for the average person to borrow books did not exist in America, however, until Benjamin Franklin suggested it to a group of his friends. In the eighteenth century, private libraries were common among wealthy people and churches sometimes had their own libraries. Franklin’s idea of a subscription library, however, was unique.

Since his club of local tradesmen was already holding regular meetings, Franklin suggested that they each bring books to the meetings so members could share. Although members brought books in, Franklin soon discovered that money was needed to supervise and maintain the collection. He tried to get subscribers from the club and elsewhere to pay a fee for the right to borrow from the collection, but there were few literate people in eighteenth century Philadelphia. The subscribers did raise enough money to hire a librarian, who kept the library open from two to three on Wednesdays and from ten to four on Saturdays. The fees also helped the library buy books from London on topics such as history, science, and politics. Anyone could look at the books in the library, but only subscribers could check them out.

Eventually subscription libraries appeared in all the American colonies. Franklin stated, “These libraries have improved the general conversation of the Americans, and made the common tradesmen and farmers as intelligent as most gentlemen from other countries.” Unfortunately, America’s libraries are currently suffering from budget cuts which threaten the services they provide as well as the existence of the libraries themselves. Americans must work to protect these educational institutions that students and others depend on for free access to knowledge.

Learning to Read and Write as a Slave

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Learning to read and write was forbidden to many slave children. Slave masters feared young slaves would become increasingly unhappy with their position in society if they realized they were able to learn as well as white children.

Some slaves did learn to read and write, however. A few learned from their masters because the masters believed reading the Bible was important for all Christians, including their slaves. Other slaves learned because it was convenient for their masters to have intelligent slaves. For example, one doctor taught his slave to write so the slave could help him keep records of his patients. Frederick Douglass was initially taught to read by his mistress, who then stopped teaching him because it angered her husband.

Even when help from the master or mistress of the house was not available, slaves found other ways to learn. For example, when Douglass’s mistress stopped teaching him, he found white neighborhood boys who gave him lessons. He snuck bread out of the house when he was sent on an errand, and traded the bread for lessons from the other boys. Learning to write was a bit trickier for Douglass, since his mistress’s lessons had not extended beyond reading. He managed to copy a few letters that he saw at the shipyard in a notebook, however. He convinced other boys to unknowingly teach him even more letters. As he writes in his autobiography, “when I met with any boy who I knew could write, I would tell him I could write as well as he. The next word would be, ‘I don’t believe you. Let me see you try it.’ I would then make the letters which I had been so fortunate as to learn, and ask him to beat that.” Eventually Douglass learned to write with the help of these children.

The kind of determination Douglass and other slaves showed toward learning resulted in about 5% of the 1860 enslaved population becoming literate. The actual number is unknown because some slaves who may have been able to read might have denied it because they did not want their masters to find out.    

    

    

Growing Up in Slavery

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Slave children took on adult roles and had experiences that today’s children could never imagine. Five-year-old slave children might work in the tobacco fields while others picked cotton and cleared ditches. Food rations from masters increased as children grew into full-time workers. As a result, their parents often pushed them into work earlier for the benefit of the family.

Children also faced the constant possibility that they could be separated from their parents. Slaves could be sold to other masters or worked to death. The memories of these separations haunted slaves even after they were freed. Slave Charles Ball was separated from his mother at age five. Fifty years later he remembered her pleadings with the slave owners and said that the “terrors of the scene return to him with painful vividness.”

Some slave children were spared separation from their families because members of the master’s family became attached to them as childhood playmates. Other slaves benefited from having white fathers. Slave James Rapier was born to a black mother and a white owner/father in 1839. Rapier’s father provided him with a college education and openly acknowledged James as his son.

When aid from outside the slave quarters could not be found, slave families and the larger slave community seldom failed to help anyone in need. For example, Mingo White helped his mother spin thread in the evenings so she would not be whipped for not finishing her heavy workload. For those who had no blood relations, the slave community became a substitute family. The slave community felt responsible for all its members, not just blood relatives. Slave children were taught to address all older slave men and women with kin titles like mother or aunt to prepare them in case a sale or death separated them from their parents. Even in the absence of parents, slave children would not be abandoned by the adult slaves who were left behind.