The Trials of Phillis Wheatley by Henry Louis Gates Jr.

In Graham’s telling, the examination is the idea of Mary Wheatley, the daughter of Phillis’s mistress, to prove to skeptics that the “young Negro girl” was indeed the author of a collection of poems that the family hoped could be published. Du Bois two years later) for a CBS radio play, The Story of Phillis Wheatley, which was broadcast on January 25, 1949. THIS SCENE WAS imagined by Shirley Graham (who would marry W. HANCOCK: We whose names are under-written do assure the world that the poems specified were (as we verily believe) written by Phillis, a young Negro girl, who was but a few years since brought an uncultivated barbarian from Africa. NARRATOR: And when the testing was done, John Hancock, at the Governor’s right, took hold of his pen and wrote: PHILLIS: “The monarch’s folly makes the people regret,” sir. MATHER: Translate this, girl: Delirant reges, plectuntur Achivi. PHILLIS: “First follow Nature and your judgment frame by her just standard, which is still the same.” MATHER: Speak for me the first line of Pope’s “Essay on Criticism.” PHILLIS: The Reverend Samuel Sewall, Sir. And a small black girl faced them as the governor said: Governor, and around the table scholars and distinguished men - John Mather, John Moorhead, James Pitts. At the head sat Governor Thomas Hutchinson, at his right John Hancock, at his left Andrew Oliver, Lt.

The faces of the men she faced were not smiling. NARRATOR: The room had a high ceiling and the oval table gleamed.

The Trials of Phillis Wheatley by Henry Louis Gates Jr.