Phillis Wheatley (c.1753–1784) was born in West Africa, captured as a child, and brought on a slave ship to Boston in 1761. There John Wheatley, a Boston tailor, purchased the girl to work for his wife, Susannah, who provided an education for Wheatley. A child prodigy, Wheatley rapidly learned to read both English and Latin.

By the age of fourteen, she was writing poetry. She achieved fame early for a poem that she wrote about an evangelical preacher named George Whitefield. In 1773, she went to London with the Wheatleys' son, Nathaniel, partly to seek support for her first book, Poems on Various Subjects, Religions and Morals. She returned to Boston before the publication of her work, having received news that Susannah Wheatley was dying. Before Susannah's death in 1774, the family released Wheatley from slavery. In 1776, the year in which America declared its independence from Britain, Wheatley met General George Washington after she had written a poem dedicated to him. In 1778, Wheatley married John Peters, a freedman.

Her later life was one of grief as she endured poverty and the loss of two children. Her third child, ill when Phillis Wheatley died, passed away shortly afterward and was buried with her in an unmarked grave. Rediscovered in the 1830s, Wheatley's poetry shows her to have been an eloquent spokesperson for her faith, for American independence, and for the abolition of slavery.