Katie Geneva Cannon on Phillis Wheatley, 49th Black Heritage Stamp honoree
The Rev. Dr. Katie Cannon elaborates on the legacy of the woman whose #BlackHeritageSeries stamp issues Thursday
Earlier this month, the U.S. Postal Service shared that the 49th stamp in their Black Heritage series will honor Phillis Wheatley, the first Black author to publish a book in the American Colonies. The first day of issue is slated for January 29.
In 2012, the Rev. Dr. Katie Geneva Cannon gave a lecture titled “Calling for the Order of the Day,” in which she offered up three lessons of liberation for 21st century living. One of these lessons was drawn from Phillis Wheatley’s life story.
Wheatley was born in Gambia and brought to America from Africa aboard a slave ship called “The Phillis” in the year 1761. When the ship landed in Boston, Phillis was about eight years old, placing the date of her birth around 1753. Upon arrival, she was named after the ship and sold as a slave to a man named James Wheatley. His wife, Susannah, observing the ease with which Phillis assimilated knowledge, taught Phillis to read the Bible. Sixteen months later, Phillis could read the Bible with ease.
Cannon then fast-forwards a decade and illustrates a foundational scene from Wheatley’s life. “On a bright morning in the spring of 1772, a young African woman by the name of Phillis Wheatley walked into the Boston courthouse to undergo an oral examination — surely one of the oddest oral exams on record,” she begins. Not yet 18, Wheatley had been brought before a group of the most powerful white men in the colonies for questioning. They had all read the book she’d published — the first book by a Black person, woman or man, to be printed in the American Colony. Cannon clarifies that “the bottom line, fundamental question was how could a Black woman who was limited to doing kitchen table ethics obtain an education commensurate to a classical education only available to young white men of Harvard.”
Eighteen men sat in the courtroom, eager to assess the young woman’s intellect and capacities. Included among them were the Rev. Charles Chauncey, pastor of the Tenth Congregational Church; John Irving, a prominent Boston merchant; John Hancock, the noted signer of the Declaration of Independence; and the governor of the colony, Thomas Hutchinson.
Though we can only speculate over what these men asked of Wheatley, we do know that her responses “were more than sufficient to prompt this blue-ribbon jury of Boston’s finest to compose, to sign and to publish an open letter to the public declaring that … Black women can think, that Black women do have the capacity to reason, that Black women can write and publish scholarly literature.”
This was not the first time that Cannon drew from Wheatley's story to bolster and bulwark her theology. In fact, the 2012 sermon was an updated version of a text that was first composed in 1999. A previous history intern at PHS, Matty Marrow, identified several other sermons within the Katie Geneva Cannon Digital Collection that reference Wheatley's legacy and what might be learned from her example. This includes Cannon’s sermon from the year 2000 titled “Keeping the Faith, Disturbing the Peace,” in which she writes that: “In essence, the implications of a womanist ethic exemplified in the life and work of our foremother, Phillis Wheatley, requires that each and everyone of us, if we take seriously our call to faithful living, then we must read and we must write, we must read and we must write, even when the lights are out. Keeping the faith — disturbing the peace, morning by morning, day by day.”
Wheatley died in 1784 at the age of 31. Having been married to a man named John Peters, she gave birth to three children, but none of them survived her. Cannon concluded her 2012 rendition of “Calling for the Order of the Day” by highlighting the similarities between Wheatley’s 18th century life and her 21st century audience.
“We too must undergo unfair trials and experience unjust tribulations when we decide to use our gifts and our graces to live as authentic disciples of Jesus Christ …There will be times when we feel afflicted in every way, and yet we must believe in our heart of hearts that we will not be crushed …And even when we are struck down we will not be destroyed.”
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