March 4, 2025 • 26 mins
The discussion centers on the friendship between Phyllis Wheatley and Obour Tanner, highlighting their intellectual exchange and the significance of their letters during the Revolutionary War. The episode delves into themes of legacy, faith, and the power of Black joy, illustrating how these women navigated their identities and built a lasting impact through their words.
CREDITS
Brigitte Fielder - Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin Madison in the College of Letters and Science
David Waldstreicher - Professor of History, Black, Race, and Ethnic Studies, Biography and Memoir, American Studies at CUNY
Cassander Smith - Professor of English at the University of Alabama / Associate Dean for Academic Affairs for the Honors College also at Alabama
Tara Bynum - Associate Professor of English and African American Studies at the University of Iowa.
Halimah Shabazz - Special Guest
Don Holmes - Assistant Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh
READ
Reading Pleasures - Everyday Black Living in Early America, By Tara A. Bynum
Race and Respectability in an Early Black Atlantic, By Cassander L. Smith
CHAPTERS
00:00 The Broader Landscape of Black Literature
02:53 Friendship and Resilience in Letters
05:50 Phyllis Wheatley: A Voice of Power
09:14 Legacy and the Importance of Correspondence
11:55 Faith and Reclamation of Power
14:50 The Impact of Black Joy and Friendship
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Jabari Davis @JabariADavis
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
My name is Jacqueesse Thomas, and you're listening to Black Lit,
a podcast about Black literature and the stories behind the storytellers.
When we talk about early African American literature, it's easy
to focus on books, the first novels, the first published poets, etc. However,
(00:25):
we now understand that the reality is much much broader.
Black literature in early America existed in letters, newspapers, and
even songs. So you have to look beyond the obvious,
and in these spaces we find some of the most
profound stories of resilience, connection, and self definition. It's the
(00:48):
writings passed from hand to hand, stories whispered from one
to another, and sometimes it's a friendship written in ink,
held on to for decades, surviving all odds. One such
story can be told in the letters between Philips, Sweetly
and Overturn. Now, Phyllis wrote many, many letters to different people,
(01:14):
but these letters, written over the course of six years,
are very special. Their correspondence offers us a rear glipse
into friendship, faith, and an intellectual exchange between two black
women who are enslaved at the height of the Revolutionary War.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
I would never make a claim about a first African
American anything in this period, because there's a lot of
you know, oftentimes our ideas of oh, what is the
first novel to be written or the first story, those
are in flux and change often. One thing I would
say for Black literature in general is that we can't
(02:02):
understand Black literature if we focus just on books. You
have to look to other print media. So much literature
that's published in newspapers, for example, and we're thinking about
even songs and broadsides. There's a lot of other places
where African American literature happens that aren't books. Given how
much the landscape for early African American literature has changed
(02:23):
and shifted in the last couple of decades, the classes
that I teach now just wouldn't be possible for undergrad
me because I wouldn't have had the things to do them,
I wouldn't have had access to the same texts, I
wouldn't have had access to the same resources. Every you know,
things are just different and changing all the time, and
(02:44):
sometimes there's a new rediscovery of a piece that shifts
how we teach and what we teach it with. So
those are super, super exciting and one of the things
that really kind of draws me to this field is
that possibility. There's always possibility in the black archive.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
What is interesting and beautiful about these letters between these
two black women, between these two slaves, to be exact,
is that they share something beyond the ideas of survivor mode.
They were building a sisterhood while the world was burning
literally around them. The war wasn't some distant, unfathomable conflict.
(03:29):
It was smoldering right outside of their front doors, impossible
to ignore. But through all of this chaos, Phyllis and
Uber kept writing, kept sharing, both very aware of the
world around them, the community that they were building, the
care for each other, and the importance of communicating.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
The closeness of their relationship. I think that really comes
out of the less and when you contrast them with
other letters she wrote, it's not that she doesn't say
what she thinks in her letters. It's just that there's
another dimension to that relationship that we don't get to
see elsewhere. And it should suggest to us that she
(04:20):
is not alone, that she has a what I call
it a cohort, a community. That the idea that she
could only have done this if she'd been isolated which
was kind of standard in the literature for a long time,
that she could only have been as studious and as
(04:41):
much of a as conversant with Anglo American literary culture
if she had not been part of a enslaved and
African community. I think that's nonsense, Like why can't we
imagine that she was code switching. Why can't we imagine
that she had a whole range of audiences and interlocutors.
(05:04):
And that's one of the things I want to convey,
and how sensitive she is to who she's talking about
and dealing with. We're talking about someone who has had
a cosmopolitan experience. We have no idea what her life
is like before she's eight, but many people who are
in the slave trade have experience a lot of locations
and are moved around a lot before they end up
(05:26):
where they end up. And she's highly likely one of
those people, even though she's only about eight years old
when she gets to Boston, and Boston is a place
where that's ten to fifteen percent African when she gets there,
and there's a particularly been an upswing of importation, so
there are a lot of enslaved people her age, and
a lot of those people are from different parts of
(05:46):
West Africa, and she knows that there are a lot
of different ways to connect to people. And so rather
than see her as having converted to a dominant culture,
I see her as someone who has realized that culture
is multiple and that there are different languages and she's
adept at learning them. So I argue that the neoclassical
(06:10):
literature is particularly important to her. And that's not instead
of the Christian stuff, it's in addition to and in
relationship to it. So if we think of those two
things as languages that she's completely able to riff on
so quickly, why would we think that she doesn't have
others that don't necessarily come out in the poetry, but
that we might get glimpses of in letters, or we
(06:30):
might get glimpses of from knowing who she's talking to
and where she was. So the political languages are others
for me. So what does this have to do with
obor isn't it interesting that they talk about their you
get glimpses into their mutual friends. And it's certainly clear
that Phyllis had traveled to Newport probably several times that
(06:51):
and her first poem is published in the newspaper there,
so there's some relationship between Newport and Boston and religious
folks and others there. It's clear that she knows some
of the people that Ober knows, and that they're aware
that there are people who travel between Newport and Boston
and Connecticut. So she's part of these wider black networks
which are connected to the Wheatly's networks, and ministers and
(07:14):
other folks you know who are referred to who carry
the letters, mister Babcock's servant, Ebenezer Pemberton, people who were
able to point to as being who they were.
Speaker 4 (07:25):
I definitely like to think about them as being in community.
But even more than that, Like, what really interests me
is the kind of there's a tension between the public
and private. On the one hand, these letters between Uber
Tanner and Phyllis Wheatley have this air of intimacy because
it's in the genre of the letter, but then there's
(07:46):
also this kind of public performative part of it, because
there wasn't an expectation that this correspondence would just stay
between two people. And so then I'm thinking, like, so,
what were the real conversations like between Luthertanna and feel
this movie, like, that's what I want to know. So anyway,
that's kind of what I think about the relationship between
(08:08):
the two, that there's some part of it that we've
got to think about as an element of performativity, and
then there's some part of it that's more intimate, and
like I can't know which is which.
Speaker 5 (08:21):
The letters are an interesting glimpse into the American colonial
landscape through the eyes of a friendship between two black
women who are also enslaved at times. Phil's Leatly, who's
based in Boston, and Obertanner, who is based in Newport.
And what we find by way of their letters is
(08:42):
that at various points they are made refugees. Boston is
under siege, so Latly has to leave in seventeen seventy five.
Newport will be under siege by the end of seventeen
seventy six, and uber China has to leave Newport. So
I think the Revolutionary War is a big deal to them,
(09:05):
especially since they're living in places where the Revolutionary War
is happening. It's not an abstract idea, it's not a
theoretical problem, it's a real life problem. I would also
say that what is important is the friendship as they articulated,
because there are a number of stories, a number of
(09:26):
answers to questions that we just can't get because they
already know one another, So questions like how do they
need I have no idea, and any of the other
kind of background questions, the letters don't provide answers to that.
But what the letters do do is kind of dig
into their friendship.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
There is a theory that they meant on the passage
coming over, which would have solidified their connection. John Wheatley
was a merchant by trade. The two families could have
crossed paths at some point, a Newport, or any other
number of possibilities. The mystery on how their friendship was
(10:06):
initially formed will remain just that a mystery, but the
sentiment and the words she chose to send to Uber
can be felt and are meaningful. Considering there was a
war going on and all of the other circumstances, there
(10:27):
was definitely a sense to write with sincerity and intention.
On July nineteenth, seventeen seventy two, Wheatly writes.
Speaker 6 (10:40):
Dear Uber, I have received your kind letter, and I'm
glad to hear of your welfare. I have been indisposed
for some time past, but through divine goodness, I am
somewhat better at present. I hope the correspondence between us
will continue, which may have the happy effect of improving
(11:01):
our mutual friendship. Till we meet in the region of
consummate blessedness. Let us endeavor, by the assistance of divine grace,
to live the life, and we shall die the death
of the righteous. May this be a happy case. I am,
dear friend, your affectionate sister.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
This phrase draws from numbers twenty three to ten in
the Bible, where Balam expresses a desire to die the
death of the righteous. Wheatley uses this reference to emphasize
her aspiration for a virtuous life leading to a blessed afterlife.
She expresses her appreciation for Tanner's friendship and emphasizes the
(11:50):
importance of maintaining their correspondence to strengthen their bond. She
reflects on her recent illness and conveys her hope that
with divine assistance, they will lead righteous lives together and
ultimately attain eternal happiness, and we shall die the death
(12:12):
of the righteous. This letter highlights Wheatley's deep spirituality, her
relationship with the Bible and the value she placed on
enduring friendships. They wrote to hold on to each other,
to carve out a space where their voices mattered. And
we know that it mattered because Uber cherished this exchange.
(12:35):
She held on to it for nearly half a century
because they were important to her, and perhaps she also
knew how important they would be for others in the future.
Speaker 6 (12:47):
For us, the.
Speaker 5 (12:48):
Letters go from seventeen seventy two to seventeen seventy nine,
and Ubertanna holds on to the letters until the early
eighteen thirties, until right before she dies, and then she
gives them to her pastor's wife. And I think that
that's an important kind of testament to the relationship that
she has weekly and also her own sense of her
(13:12):
legacy and wanting to make sure that Wheatly's story is
told alongside her own. So she hands off the letters
to her pastor's wife, Kavin eith Feacher, who thirty years
later and he is eighteen sixty three, gives them to
her nephew in law, who then gives them the Charles Dean,
(13:35):
who works for the Massachusetts Historical Society, which is why
we can read the letters today.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
This was more than just her friendship, more than even sisterhood.
This was legacy building. Wheatley wasn't just writing to connect.
She was playing chess in a world that tried to
keep her off the She sent poems to people in
(14:03):
power not just because she believed in them, but because
she wanted to be seen. She knew the value of
her work. She knew that her words had the strength
of immortality. She knew she was worthy, and she very
(14:23):
well knew the game.
Speaker 7 (14:25):
Well, why did she choose to write Washington? She could
have created poetry and she could have wrote to other people.
Why did she choose to write the Secretary of North America?
Who was this dude England sit Over to be like
the person responsible for all of North America? Why did
she use George Whitfield's rhetoric Earth in seventeen seventy to
(14:48):
write one of her most popular poems and then specifically
take that poem and send it to the Countess of Huntington,
who is in the Hastens in order to kind of
get a financial beneficiary and to get someone she She
had rhetorical goals, aims, and desires and strategy, so a
lot of us think when she writes these people and
(15:08):
you know, some of these people are slave owners, and
she's not saying anything about slavery. It's all about like Christianity.
I think that a lot of it was her trying
to get herself in front of people who she felt
had some power, right, and we kind of knew. I
was thinking about how power is going to be played out,
whether or not England was in control of North America,
(15:30):
or whether or not the Americans will be in control
of North America, whomever. Right, she wanted to put herself
in front of those people, perhaps that she would be
the example, right, you know, an African person willing to
be part of the colonial American society, part of the
American society post revolution and one vein but also too
in this sense that you know, she felt that she
(15:51):
had something to say, not necessarily for those people at
that particular time, but for us.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Right.
Speaker 7 (15:57):
And one of the ways that we think about if
African American rhetorical practices have been in part uniquely signified
to or connected to abolitionism, right, one of the most
important twos of abolitionism is that you don't write simply
for yourself to be free, but for the next generation
of people to live in a more prosperous society. So
(16:20):
my thinking too is that she's trying to define a
moral authority that would far exceed her temporer time on earth.
She wanted to leave a lasting rhetorical and written record
to how she tried to how she labored, what her
vocation was. And so I think that she, like so
many Africans in this particular period, so many African Americans
(16:41):
in this particular period, began to kind of think about
ways in which they can produce written records.
Speaker 4 (16:47):
In fact, Phillis Whitey only published one volume, a forward you,
but she tried to publish the second one, but you know,
there was a little thing like the revolution, that war,
that kind of you know. And so when shed an
advertisement for that second volume, she listed a table of contents,
and in her table of contents it was a series
of letters that she was including as part of her
(17:10):
second volume. So that tells me that when Phyllis Wheatley
was doing her letter correspondence, there was some part of
it where she was thinking these letters might be for
public consumption. And so then that makes me think, how
does one do that, Like, how do you write a
letter and balance the private and the public.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Not by choice, but she always had two audiences in mind,
one the white people who might publish her in two
the black people who would truly understand. And so, like
every great poet, she wrote with layered texts, with words
that would carry the truth for those who needed it
(17:54):
while still being respectable.
Speaker 7 (17:57):
African American people have at least have always had to
be speaking to at least two audiences right trying to
think about their identity themselves, especially if other black people
will be reading it. They're thinking about that particular audience,
but they're also concerning themselves with their survival life line.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
You are listening to Black lit when they say that
the Bible was used to keep black folks in chains,
but Phyllis flipped it back on them. She didn't swallow
the version of Christianity that said know your place. She
read deeper, looked harder, and found her own faith, a
(18:42):
faith that called slavery what it was.
Speaker 7 (18:45):
And in seventeen seventy four, for instance, she wrote a
letter to Samson Acum, who is a Native American Presbyterian
minister who also goes to London prior to Weekly and
he'd written about the treatment of enslaved Africans, and she
writes him alert and says, thank you for your advocacy
for black people. And she says that everything I write,
and of course I'm paraphrasing and summarizing here, but she says,
(19:08):
everything I write, I do not for their hurt, but
to convince them of the strange ascertainty of their actions
and conducts, which is diametrically opposite.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
In this letter, Wheatley eloquently critiques the hypocrisy of those
who advocate for liberty while oppressing others, drawing parallels between
the plight of enslaved Africans and the Israelites in Egypt.
Speaker 8 (19:33):
She writes, for in every human breast God has implanted
a principle which we call love of freedom. It is
impatient of oppression and pants for deliverance. And by the
leave of our modern Egyptians, I will assert that the
(19:56):
same principle lives in us. God grants deliverance in his
own way and time, and get him honor upon all
those whose avarice impels them to countenance and help forward
the calamities of their fellow creatures. This I desire not
(20:18):
for their hurts, but to convince them of the strange
absurdity of their conduct, whose words and actions are so
diametrically opposite, how well the cry for liberty and the
reverse disposition of their exercise of oppressive power over others
(20:38):
degree I humbly think it does not require the penetration
of philosopher to determine.
Speaker 7 (20:48):
So therefore, she's very mindful that people are using Christianity,
using faith to say that African people should be enslaved,
that they need to be controlled, that they're violent xyz.
And she said that I don't see this in the
literature that I'm reading about God. I don't see this right.
And thus she's revising that narrative about how she's assessing
(21:09):
her faith. And she goes on, I think with that
particular perspective, which I think would make her feel that
she's the one who's in the superior position, that she's
the one who has been author to offer an education
and to moralize, if you will, people who are less
learned on the tenets of Christianity.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
Isn't it interesting that she gets political in that wonderful
letter which she talks about the hypocrisy of of the
modern Egyptians, and who is she talking about it? She's
talking about the British. Who are the modern Egyptians of
the British, of the Americans? Are they both like that?
We only have it because somebody chose to take it
out of her letter and put it in the newspapers
where it gets reprinted. But that shows us so we
have no idea. She may have written dozens or hundreds
(21:50):
of letters that we don't have right or said different
things to different people. She's trying things out. She doesn't
know what's going to happen next, who's going to win
the war, and all these things. And so this is
the wind into her practice all the way through, from
the beginning, all the way to the end. And so
often we've wanted to say, oh, she's she throws in
her lot with the Patriots and things don't work out
(22:11):
for her in its drag, or she has these kinds
of ideas. This is what she thinks about white people,
or this is what she thinks about the patriots, or
this is what she thinks about Christianity, like as if
she's not someone who's like saying different things to different people,
and it's evolving depending on what she thinks is possible,
and she doesn't know what's going to happen next. It's
because we know so little that the chronology is and
(22:32):
are missing so much, and the life is so relatively short, right,
that the chronology is important. And it's actually the paying
attention to that where we can see her making decisions
and choosing to do certain things at certain times in
certain situations. And for me, that proves both that how
deliberate she is and how creative she is, but also
how political she is.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
And Wheatley wasn't alone in this fight. Black writers, preachers,
and thinkers were flipping the script everywhere, challenging these so
called men of God at every turn.
Speaker 7 (23:06):
That's why the nineteenth century looks like it look. And
slavery would come to an end in the eighteen sixties
in part because per slavery advocates would be the members
of Congress and all these other people, but they would
continuously use religion. Right as the two suggest that African
people were enslave. But you have so many African American
people and some I guess you know Anglo American people
(23:27):
writing at the time as well, would you know challenge
against that and say that you know the way that
they see faith, Christianity or Islam, because Islam is very
important in early America too. The way that they are
seeing these faith kind of the way that they read them,
would suggest that slavery shouldn't be a part of God's children.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Wheatley wasn't begging for approval. She was teaching and holding
up a mirror, making them see their own contradictions. And
it is in that act that she reclaimed her power.
The letters feel deeply personal, but they weren't meant to
be hidden. Back then, letters weren't private like text messages
(24:05):
are today. They passed through hands and were copied and
were sometimes even published. Phyllis knew this. She expected her
words to last, and.
Speaker 5 (24:17):
I think as of right now, what makes the friendship
important is that currently the only documented by way of
letters friendship between two black women who were also enslaved.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
Uber didn't just hold on to Phyllis's letters. She made
sure that they survived so that we could read them today.
That's the thing about black joy. It persists. Even in
the eighteenth century, when the world told them that they
were nothing, Phyllis and Uber built something undeniable. They wrote
(24:59):
themsel into history. In history for once held on to them.
Special thanks to all of the guests on today's episode
in order that you heard their voices. Bridget Fielder, David Wallsheiser,
Cassie Smith, Tara a Bidam, Elima Shabaz reading the Letters
(25:21):
by Phillip Sweetley and Don Holmes.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
Black Lit is a.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Black Effect original series in partnership with I Heart Media.
Is written and created by myself Jack Queise Thomas and
executive produced alongside Dolly s Bishop. Chanelle Collins is the
director of Production, Head of Talent Nicole Spence, writer producer
Jason Torres, Our researcher and producer is Jabari Davis, and
(25:50):
the mix and sound design is by the humble Duane Crawford.
Gratitude is an action, so I have to give praise
to those who took the time out to write review.
Please keep sharing and we will promise to bring more
writers and greater episodes to you. Also, if you're looking
(26:12):
to become a writer or in search of a supportive
writing community, join me for a free creative writing session
on my website Black writers Room dot com, b LK
Writer's Room dot com, or hit me up directly for
more details at underscore t h A T S P
E a c E.
Speaker 6 (26:33):
That's peace.
My name is Jacqueesse Thomas, and you're listening to Black Lit,
a podcast about Black literature and the stories behind the storytellers.
When we talk about early African American literature, it's easy
to focus on books, the first novels, the first published poets, etc. However,
(00:25):
we now understand that the reality is much much broader.
Black literature in early America existed in letters, newspapers, and
even songs. So you have to look beyond the obvious,
and in these spaces we find some of the most
profound stories of resilience, connection, and self definition. It's the
(00:48):
writings passed from hand to hand, stories whispered from one
to another, and sometimes it's a friendship written in ink,
held on to for decades, surviving all odds. One such
story can be told in the letters between Philips, Sweetly
and Overturn. Now, Phyllis wrote many, many letters to different people,
(01:14):
but these letters, written over the course of six years,
are very special. Their correspondence offers us a rear glipse
into friendship, faith, and an intellectual exchange between two black
women who are enslaved at the height of the Revolutionary War.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
I would never make a claim about a first African
American anything in this period, because there's a lot of
you know, oftentimes our ideas of oh, what is the
first novel to be written or the first story, those
are in flux and change often. One thing I would
say for Black literature in general is that we can't
(02:02):
understand Black literature if we focus just on books. You
have to look to other print media. So much literature
that's published in newspapers, for example, and we're thinking about
even songs and broadsides. There's a lot of other places
where African American literature happens that aren't books. Given how
much the landscape for early African American literature has changed
(02:23):
and shifted in the last couple of decades, the classes
that I teach now just wouldn't be possible for undergrad
me because I wouldn't have had the things to do them,
I wouldn't have had access to the same texts, I
wouldn't have had access to the same resources. Every you know,
things are just different and changing all the time, and
(02:44):
sometimes there's a new rediscovery of a piece that shifts
how we teach and what we teach it with. So
those are super, super exciting and one of the things
that really kind of draws me to this field is
that possibility. There's always possibility in the black archive.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
What is interesting and beautiful about these letters between these
two black women, between these two slaves, to be exact,
is that they share something beyond the ideas of survivor mode.
They were building a sisterhood while the world was burning
literally around them. The war wasn't some distant, unfathomable conflict.
(03:29):
It was smoldering right outside of their front doors, impossible
to ignore. But through all of this chaos, Phyllis and
Uber kept writing, kept sharing, both very aware of the
world around them, the community that they were building, the
care for each other, and the importance of communicating.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
The closeness of their relationship. I think that really comes
out of the less and when you contrast them with
other letters she wrote, it's not that she doesn't say
what she thinks in her letters. It's just that there's
another dimension to that relationship that we don't get to
see elsewhere. And it should suggest to us that she
(04:20):
is not alone, that she has a what I call
it a cohort, a community. That the idea that she
could only have done this if she'd been isolated which
was kind of standard in the literature for a long time,
that she could only have been as studious and as
(04:41):
much of a as conversant with Anglo American literary culture
if she had not been part of a enslaved and
African community. I think that's nonsense, Like why can't we
imagine that she was code switching. Why can't we imagine
that she had a whole range of audiences and interlocutors.
(05:04):
And that's one of the things I want to convey,
and how sensitive she is to who she's talking about
and dealing with. We're talking about someone who has had
a cosmopolitan experience. We have no idea what her life
is like before she's eight, but many people who are
in the slave trade have experience a lot of locations
and are moved around a lot before they end up
(05:26):
where they end up. And she's highly likely one of
those people, even though she's only about eight years old
when she gets to Boston, and Boston is a place
where that's ten to fifteen percent African when she gets there,
and there's a particularly been an upswing of importation, so
there are a lot of enslaved people her age, and
a lot of those people are from different parts of
(05:46):
West Africa, and she knows that there are a lot
of different ways to connect to people. And so rather
than see her as having converted to a dominant culture,
I see her as someone who has realized that culture
is multiple and that there are different languages and she's
adept at learning them. So I argue that the neoclassical
(06:10):
literature is particularly important to her. And that's not instead
of the Christian stuff, it's in addition to and in
relationship to it. So if we think of those two
things as languages that she's completely able to riff on
so quickly, why would we think that she doesn't have
others that don't necessarily come out in the poetry, but
that we might get glimpses of in letters, or we
(06:30):
might get glimpses of from knowing who she's talking to
and where she was. So the political languages are others
for me. So what does this have to do with
obor isn't it interesting that they talk about their you
get glimpses into their mutual friends. And it's certainly clear
that Phyllis had traveled to Newport probably several times that
(06:51):
and her first poem is published in the newspaper there,
so there's some relationship between Newport and Boston and religious
folks and others there. It's clear that she knows some
of the people that Ober knows, and that they're aware
that there are people who travel between Newport and Boston
and Connecticut. So she's part of these wider black networks
which are connected to the Wheatly's networks, and ministers and
(07:14):
other folks you know who are referred to who carry
the letters, mister Babcock's servant, Ebenezer Pemberton, people who were
able to point to as being who they were.
Speaker 4 (07:25):
I definitely like to think about them as being in community.
But even more than that, Like, what really interests me
is the kind of there's a tension between the public
and private. On the one hand, these letters between Uber
Tanner and Phyllis Wheatley have this air of intimacy because
it's in the genre of the letter, but then there's
(07:46):
also this kind of public performative part of it, because
there wasn't an expectation that this correspondence would just stay
between two people. And so then I'm thinking, like, so,
what were the real conversations like between Luthertanna and feel
this movie, like, that's what I want to know. So anyway,
that's kind of what I think about the relationship between
(08:08):
the two, that there's some part of it that we've
got to think about as an element of performativity, and
then there's some part of it that's more intimate, and
like I can't know which is which.
Speaker 5 (08:21):
The letters are an interesting glimpse into the American colonial
landscape through the eyes of a friendship between two black
women who are also enslaved at times. Phil's Leatly, who's
based in Boston, and Obertanner, who is based in Newport.
And what we find by way of their letters is
(08:42):
that at various points they are made refugees. Boston is
under siege, so Latly has to leave in seventeen seventy five.
Newport will be under siege by the end of seventeen
seventy six, and uber China has to leave Newport. So
I think the Revolutionary War is a big deal to them,
(09:05):
especially since they're living in places where the Revolutionary War
is happening. It's not an abstract idea, it's not a
theoretical problem, it's a real life problem. I would also
say that what is important is the friendship as they articulated,
because there are a number of stories, a number of
(09:26):
answers to questions that we just can't get because they
already know one another, So questions like how do they
need I have no idea, and any of the other
kind of background questions, the letters don't provide answers to that.
But what the letters do do is kind of dig
into their friendship.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
There is a theory that they meant on the passage
coming over, which would have solidified their connection. John Wheatley
was a merchant by trade. The two families could have
crossed paths at some point, a Newport, or any other
number of possibilities. The mystery on how their friendship was
(10:06):
initially formed will remain just that a mystery, but the
sentiment and the words she chose to send to Uber
can be felt and are meaningful. Considering there was a
war going on and all of the other circumstances, there
(10:27):
was definitely a sense to write with sincerity and intention.
On July nineteenth, seventeen seventy two, Wheatly writes.
Speaker 6 (10:40):
Dear Uber, I have received your kind letter, and I'm
glad to hear of your welfare. I have been indisposed
for some time past, but through divine goodness, I am
somewhat better at present. I hope the correspondence between us
will continue, which may have the happy effect of improving
(11:01):
our mutual friendship. Till we meet in the region of
consummate blessedness. Let us endeavor, by the assistance of divine grace,
to live the life, and we shall die the death
of the righteous. May this be a happy case. I am,
dear friend, your affectionate sister.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
This phrase draws from numbers twenty three to ten in
the Bible, where Balam expresses a desire to die the
death of the righteous. Wheatley uses this reference to emphasize
her aspiration for a virtuous life leading to a blessed afterlife.
She expresses her appreciation for Tanner's friendship and emphasizes the
(11:50):
importance of maintaining their correspondence to strengthen their bond. She
reflects on her recent illness and conveys her hope that
with divine assistance, they will lead righteous lives together and
ultimately attain eternal happiness, and we shall die the death
(12:12):
of the righteous. This letter highlights Wheatley's deep spirituality, her
relationship with the Bible and the value she placed on
enduring friendships. They wrote to hold on to each other,
to carve out a space where their voices mattered. And
we know that it mattered because Uber cherished this exchange.
(12:35):
She held on to it for nearly half a century
because they were important to her, and perhaps she also
knew how important they would be for others in the future.
Speaker 6 (12:47):
For us, the.
Speaker 5 (12:48):
Letters go from seventeen seventy two to seventeen seventy nine,
and Ubertanna holds on to the letters until the early
eighteen thirties, until right before she dies, and then she
gives them to her pastor's wife. And I think that
that's an important kind of testament to the relationship that
she has weekly and also her own sense of her
(13:12):
legacy and wanting to make sure that Wheatly's story is
told alongside her own. So she hands off the letters
to her pastor's wife, Kavin eith Feacher, who thirty years
later and he is eighteen sixty three, gives them to
her nephew in law, who then gives them the Charles Dean,
(13:35):
who works for the Massachusetts Historical Society, which is why
we can read the letters today.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
This was more than just her friendship, more than even sisterhood.
This was legacy building. Wheatley wasn't just writing to connect.
She was playing chess in a world that tried to
keep her off the She sent poems to people in
(14:03):
power not just because she believed in them, but because
she wanted to be seen. She knew the value of
her work. She knew that her words had the strength
of immortality. She knew she was worthy, and she very
(14:23):
well knew the game.
Speaker 7 (14:25):
Well, why did she choose to write Washington? She could
have created poetry and she could have wrote to other people.
Why did she choose to write the Secretary of North America?
Who was this dude England sit Over to be like
the person responsible for all of North America? Why did
she use George Whitfield's rhetoric Earth in seventeen seventy to
(14:48):
write one of her most popular poems and then specifically
take that poem and send it to the Countess of Huntington,
who is in the Hastens in order to kind of
get a financial beneficiary and to get someone she She
had rhetorical goals, aims, and desires and strategy, so a
lot of us think when she writes these people and
(15:08):
you know, some of these people are slave owners, and
she's not saying anything about slavery. It's all about like Christianity.
I think that a lot of it was her trying
to get herself in front of people who she felt
had some power, right, and we kind of knew. I
was thinking about how power is going to be played out,
whether or not England was in control of North America,
(15:30):
or whether or not the Americans will be in control
of North America, whomever. Right, she wanted to put herself
in front of those people, perhaps that she would be
the example, right, you know, an African person willing to
be part of the colonial American society, part of the
American society post revolution and one vein but also too
in this sense that you know, she felt that she
(15:51):
had something to say, not necessarily for those people at
that particular time, but for us.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Right.
Speaker 7 (15:57):
And one of the ways that we think about if
African American rhetorical practices have been in part uniquely signified
to or connected to abolitionism, right, one of the most
important twos of abolitionism is that you don't write simply
for yourself to be free, but for the next generation
of people to live in a more prosperous society. So
(16:20):
my thinking too is that she's trying to define a
moral authority that would far exceed her temporer time on earth.
She wanted to leave a lasting rhetorical and written record
to how she tried to how she labored, what her
vocation was. And so I think that she, like so
many Africans in this particular period, so many African Americans
(16:41):
in this particular period, began to kind of think about
ways in which they can produce written records.
Speaker 4 (16:47):
In fact, Phillis Whitey only published one volume, a forward you,
but she tried to publish the second one, but you know,
there was a little thing like the revolution, that war,
that kind of you know. And so when shed an
advertisement for that second volume, she listed a table of contents,
and in her table of contents it was a series
of letters that she was including as part of her
(17:10):
second volume. So that tells me that when Phyllis Wheatley
was doing her letter correspondence, there was some part of
it where she was thinking these letters might be for
public consumption. And so then that makes me think, how
does one do that, Like, how do you write a
letter and balance the private and the public.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Not by choice, but she always had two audiences in mind,
one the white people who might publish her in two
the black people who would truly understand. And so, like
every great poet, she wrote with layered texts, with words
that would carry the truth for those who needed it
(17:54):
while still being respectable.
Speaker 7 (17:57):
African American people have at least have always had to
be speaking to at least two audiences right trying to
think about their identity themselves, especially if other black people
will be reading it. They're thinking about that particular audience,
but they're also concerning themselves with their survival life line.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
You are listening to Black lit when they say that
the Bible was used to keep black folks in chains,
but Phyllis flipped it back on them. She didn't swallow
the version of Christianity that said know your place. She
read deeper, looked harder, and found her own faith, a
(18:42):
faith that called slavery what it was.
Speaker 7 (18:45):
And in seventeen seventy four, for instance, she wrote a
letter to Samson Acum, who is a Native American Presbyterian
minister who also goes to London prior to Weekly and
he'd written about the treatment of enslaved Africans, and she
writes him alert and says, thank you for your advocacy
for black people. And she says that everything I write,
and of course I'm paraphrasing and summarizing here, but she says,
(19:08):
everything I write, I do not for their hurt, but
to convince them of the strange ascertainty of their actions
and conducts, which is diametrically opposite.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
In this letter, Wheatley eloquently critiques the hypocrisy of those
who advocate for liberty while oppressing others, drawing parallels between
the plight of enslaved Africans and the Israelites in Egypt.
Speaker 8 (19:33):
She writes, for in every human breast God has implanted
a principle which we call love of freedom. It is
impatient of oppression and pants for deliverance. And by the
leave of our modern Egyptians, I will assert that the
(19:56):
same principle lives in us. God grants deliverance in his
own way and time, and get him honor upon all
those whose avarice impels them to countenance and help forward
the calamities of their fellow creatures. This I desire not
(20:18):
for their hurts, but to convince them of the strange
absurdity of their conduct, whose words and actions are so
diametrically opposite, how well the cry for liberty and the
reverse disposition of their exercise of oppressive power over others
(20:38):
degree I humbly think it does not require the penetration
of philosopher to determine.
Speaker 7 (20:48):
So therefore, she's very mindful that people are using Christianity,
using faith to say that African people should be enslaved,
that they need to be controlled, that they're violent xyz.
And she said that I don't see this in the
literature that I'm reading about God. I don't see this right.
And thus she's revising that narrative about how she's assessing
(21:09):
her faith. And she goes on, I think with that
particular perspective, which I think would make her feel that
she's the one who's in the superior position, that she's
the one who has been author to offer an education
and to moralize, if you will, people who are less
learned on the tenets of Christianity.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
Isn't it interesting that she gets political in that wonderful
letter which she talks about the hypocrisy of of the
modern Egyptians, and who is she talking about it? She's
talking about the British. Who are the modern Egyptians of
the British, of the Americans? Are they both like that?
We only have it because somebody chose to take it
out of her letter and put it in the newspapers
where it gets reprinted. But that shows us so we
have no idea. She may have written dozens or hundreds
(21:50):
of letters that we don't have right or said different
things to different people. She's trying things out. She doesn't
know what's going to happen next, who's going to win
the war, and all these things. And so this is
the wind into her practice all the way through, from
the beginning, all the way to the end. And so
often we've wanted to say, oh, she's she throws in
her lot with the Patriots and things don't work out
(22:11):
for her in its drag, or she has these kinds
of ideas. This is what she thinks about white people,
or this is what she thinks about the patriots, or
this is what she thinks about Christianity, like as if
she's not someone who's like saying different things to different people,
and it's evolving depending on what she thinks is possible,
and she doesn't know what's going to happen next. It's
because we know so little that the chronology is and
(22:32):
are missing so much, and the life is so relatively short, right,
that the chronology is important. And it's actually the paying
attention to that where we can see her making decisions
and choosing to do certain things at certain times in
certain situations. And for me, that proves both that how
deliberate she is and how creative she is, but also
how political she is.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
And Wheatley wasn't alone in this fight. Black writers, preachers,
and thinkers were flipping the script everywhere, challenging these so
called men of God at every turn.
Speaker 7 (23:06):
That's why the nineteenth century looks like it look. And
slavery would come to an end in the eighteen sixties
in part because per slavery advocates would be the members
of Congress and all these other people, but they would
continuously use religion. Right as the two suggest that African
people were enslave. But you have so many African American
people and some I guess you know Anglo American people
(23:27):
writing at the time as well, would you know challenge
against that and say that you know the way that
they see faith, Christianity or Islam, because Islam is very
important in early America too. The way that they are
seeing these faith kind of the way that they read them,
would suggest that slavery shouldn't be a part of God's children.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Wheatley wasn't begging for approval. She was teaching and holding
up a mirror, making them see their own contradictions. And
it is in that act that she reclaimed her power.
The letters feel deeply personal, but they weren't meant to
be hidden. Back then, letters weren't private like text messages
(24:05):
are today. They passed through hands and were copied and
were sometimes even published. Phyllis knew this. She expected her
words to last, and.
Speaker 5 (24:17):
I think as of right now, what makes the friendship
important is that currently the only documented by way of
letters friendship between two black women who were also enslaved.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
Uber didn't just hold on to Phyllis's letters. She made
sure that they survived so that we could read them today.
That's the thing about black joy. It persists. Even in
the eighteenth century, when the world told them that they
were nothing, Phyllis and Uber built something undeniable. They wrote
(24:59):
themsel into history. In history for once held on to them.
Special thanks to all of the guests on today's episode
in order that you heard their voices. Bridget Fielder, David Wallsheiser,
Cassie Smith, Tara a Bidam, Elima Shabaz reading the Letters
(25:21):
by Phillip Sweetley and Don Holmes.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
Black Lit is a.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Black Effect original series in partnership with I Heart Media.
Is written and created by myself Jack Queise Thomas and
executive produced alongside Dolly s Bishop. Chanelle Collins is the
director of Production, Head of Talent Nicole Spence, writer producer
Jason Torres, Our researcher and producer is Jabari Davis, and
(25:50):
the mix and sound design is by the humble Duane Crawford.
Gratitude is an action, so I have to give praise
to those who took the time out to write review.
Please keep sharing and we will promise to bring more
writers and greater episodes to you. Also, if you're looking
(26:12):
to become a writer or in search of a supportive
writing community, join me for a free creative writing session
on my website Black writers Room dot com, b LK
Writer's Room dot com, or hit me up directly for
more details at underscore t h A T S P
E a c E.
Speaker 6 (26:33):
That's peace.
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