Harvard Scholar Outlines History of Phillis Wheatley

In a March 26, 2002 Jefferson Lecture, Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., chairman of the Afro-American Studies Department of Harvard University presented an all-but-forgotten episode in the history of colonial America and its aftermath. With the eventual publication of her book, he says, Phillis Wheatley, "almost immediately, became the most famous African on the face of the earth." Moreover, she became a center of controversy, fueling a debate as to whether African Americans could be counted on to produce representative literature and art. When none other than the estimable Thomas Jefferson -- a Founding Father and future President of the United States -- offered a skeptical perspective in the early 1780s, it had a telling effect over the years that followed. Complete text