Phillis Wheatley

In 1761, a ship named the Phillis docked in Boston and a young girl disembarked. Her birth name is lost to history. We don’t know her age, but her missing front teeth suggested that she was around seven or eight years old. And she was naked save for a “dirty carpet about her.” We can only imagine that she was terrified, exhausted from the long transatlantic journey from West Africa, and haunted by memories of her kidnapping and enslavement.