In Roger Ross Williams’ 2023 documentary film “Stamped from the Beginning,” based upon Ibram X. Kendi’s book of the same name, a series of prominent Black women recount their “Phillis Wheatley moment.”
A West African kidnapped as a child and enslaved in Boston, Wheatley captivated England and the American colonies with the publication of “Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral” in 1773. Before its publication, she was “examined” by “the most respectable Characters in Boston,” forcing her to prove that the poems really were her own work. The book was released with an attestation that Wheatley “has been examined by some of the best Judges, and is thought qualified to write them.”
