Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784) was an exceptional woman. Her slave experience was different from the traditional slave experience because she could read and was highly educated. The consensuses, during this time, was that slaves were inferior to white people and lacked the capability to be educated because race was seen as biological a factor.
She was a part of a minority of fortunate, exceptional, literate black people at the time, so she had a moral responsibility to speak up about the status of African Americans. She exercised racial consciousness because she had to take more of a submissive role when speaking to her audience of upper-class white American men who had slaves and believed black people were subordinate (“Your Excellency’s most obedient humble servant, Phillis Wheatley”). She had to be strategic because her race and gender were working against her, so she had to prove she had the place to even speak to men like George Washington, James Bowdoin, and the Earl of Dartmouth by incorporating a lot of neo-Classicism references in her writings to put herself on the same playing field. She uses her education as capital by showing she and the audience are intellectually equal. The only thing she has in common with these powerful white men was her ability to read.
She tried to expose to these men that they are working in contradictory ways. They were fighting for their independence from Great Britain while continuing to have slavery in their own country. However, she could not just come outright and say that because of her status in the U.S. Instead, she pleads and employs Christianity to show that all are equal under God. God sees no difference in skin color; he sees black and white as brothers and sisters, and all as his children. (“Remember Christians, Negros, Black as Cain”). Her speaking up during this time also shows that black people were also involved in the American Revolution. Slaves knew what bondage feels like more than anyone in the U.S. at the time. In other words, freedom cannot be defined without black people (“The Land of freedom’s heaven-defended race”).
During Wheatley’s time, ladyship was given to women of high status and noble background. The only people considered high status were white people. Personhood and ladyhood were denied to her because she was a slave. As a result, she spent more time advocating for personhood for black people because they were rendered to the state of chattel and second-class citizenship. Fighting for equal rights for black people was more of a pressing matter than fighting for specifically black women. She had to fight to prove that she and other members of the black race are humans and are deserving of the same rights as white people. It would not have made sense to strictly fight for black women because all black people were denied personhood.
Lastly, Wheatly’s methodology was to work within the system; that is why she took more of a submissive role. Her submissive strategy would fall under what a lady was at this time because women were expected to be more docile and respectful of their male counterparts. She successfully played into this idea of a lady. In the end, she was able to be in conversation with the founding fathers of the country. Her strategy has been regarded as unsuccessful, but she transcended white spaces as a slave, and that is what makes her valuable and would be characterized as un-ladylike.
Wheatley, Phillis. Complete Writings. Penguin, 2001.