Beautiful Statue - Stark Warning

A beautiful statue of Phillis Wheatley graces Commonwealth Avenue in Boston’s Back Bay.

Teachers foisted her work on me as a youngster.

An even greater distaste developed over time.

Investors in white privilege, conniving rationalizers, and assorted dunderheads say she knew no better, and her work should be appreciated for its literary form.

To them I say, Phillis Wheatley was contemporary with Elizabeth Freeman (Mum Bett), great-grandmother of W.E.B. Dubois, who successfully challenged slavery in Massachusetts in Phillis Wheatley’s lifetime.

Surely, Phillis Wheatley read newspapers.

Her explicit gratitude for bondage is all the more pathetic for its eloquence.

Yet, there is some value in her life story.

She parroted the ‘classic’ style Europeans of her day celebrated, was hyped as a prodigy – an exception that proved the rule, and had to defend and prove her abilities were genuine in a court of law!

That says much about America’s revolutionary generation.

She famously, lucratively extolled white culture, but died in poverty in her 30's.

There is a poignant and generally unheeded lesson in her story.

The beautiful statue is a stark warning.

….come here James Brown….