Recognizing April as National Poetry Month, Landrum Library presented a program depicting the life of Phyllis Wheatley, a published poet in the late 1700s.

Arriving in a cargo ship at age 7, Wheatley enters the world of slavery. She is purchased as a house slave to a Boston family.

Karen McDowell dramatized a self-written depiction of Wheatley’s early slave life. Wheatley learned to read and write with the encouragement of her owners, writing poems about morals and religious values in the slave environment. Wheatley could not get her work published in America, however it was published in England.

Article submitted by Anne Regan