Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784) is widely recognized as the first African-American author ever published. The young girl was brought from Africa to Boston as a slave in 1761 at the age of seven, and bought by a tailor, John Wheatley. She received an extensive education within the home of the family that owned her, and began writing poetry at about the age of 13. In his preface to Wheatley's Collected Works, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. writes:
Sometime in 1772, a young African girl walked demurely into a room in Boston to undergo an oral examination, the results of which would determine the direction of her life and work. Perhaps she was shocked upon entering the appointed room. For there... sat 18 of Boston's most notable citizens. Among them were... John Hancock, who would later gain fame for his signature on the Declaration of Independence. At the center of this group was His Excellency, Thomas Hutchinson, governor of Massachusetts...The challenges to the credibility of Wheatley's authorship of Poems on Various Subjects Religious and Moral did not end with its publication, however. As late as 1784, Thomas Jefferson would write,Why had this august group been assembled? Why had it seen fit to summon this young African girl, scarcely 18 years old, before it? The group of "the most respectable Characters in Boston," as it would later describe itself, had assembled to question closely the African adolescent on the slender sheaf of poems that she claimed to have "written by herself." We can only speculate on the nature of the questions asked to the fledgling poet. Perhaps they asked her to identify and explain -- for all to hear -- exactly who were the Greek and Latin gods and poets alluded to so frequently in her work. Perhaps they asked her to conjugate a verb in Latin or even to translate randomly selected passages from the Latin, which she and her master, John Wheatley, claimed that she "had made some Progress in."...
We do know, however, that the African poet's responses were more than sufficient to prompt the eighteen august gentlemen to compose, sign and publish a two-paragraph "Attestation," an open letter "To the Publick" that prefaces Phillis Wheatley's book and that reads in part:
We whose names are under-written, do assure the World, that the Poems specified in the following Page, were (as we verily believe) written by Phillis, a young Negro Girl, who was but a few Years since, brought an uncultivated Barbarian from Africa, and has ever since been, and now is, under the Disadvantage of serving as a Slave in a Family in this Town. She has been examined by some of the best Judges, and is thought qualified to write them....Without the published "Attestation," Wheatley's publisher claimed, few would believe that an African could possibly have written poetry all by herself. As the 18 put the matter clearly in their letter, "Numbers would be ready to suspect they were not really the Writings of Phyllis." (Wheatley, 1988, vii-ix).
Misery is often the parent of the most affecting touches in poetry. Among the blacks is misery enough, God knows, but no poetry.... Their love is ardent, but it kindles the senses only, not the imagination. Religion, indeed, has produced a Phyllis Whately[sic]; but it could not produce a poet. The compositions published under her name are below the dignity of criticism. (Quoted by Julian D. Mason, Jr., in his introduction to Wheatley, 1966, p. xliii).
What can we learn, those of us concerned with the ongoing struggles faced when people with severe communication challenges begin to make their words known through facilitated communication? Yes, we must continue the efforts of thoughtfully validating authorship and of learning to deal with the subtleties of facilitator influence. Work such as Cynthia Sheehan's article on page 6, the article by Annegret Schubert and Doug Biklen on page 11, and articles published previously in the Digest are, and will continue to be, of great importance. The lesson of Phyllis Wheatley, though, is that we must not lose heart; not even in the face of those who, despite overwhelming evidence, remain unable to look in the eyes of people who are very different from them and see their own brothers and sisters looking back.