… was the first African-American author to publish a book in the colonies. She was a sensation in the colonial-era Boston for a book she wrote in 1773 titled ‘Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral.’ Raised as a slave she learned to read and write and was freed by her owners after the books publication.

Wheatley was forced to appear among a a group of citizens to prove she had actually written the poems. The work was so good many did not believe a slave could have written such quality. When her book was published a preface was signed by leading Boston citizens attesting that an “uncultivated Barbarian from Africa” had actually written it.

One of the signers in the preface was John Hancock, the first person to sign the Declaration of Independence.

from The Intellectual Devotional- American History by David Kidder and Noah Oppenheim.
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