(folksy banjo music) - [Narrator] How did a poet from Africa land a meeting with George Washington?

Phillis Wheatley is the first African American to publish a book of poetry.

Stolen from West Africa at age seven or eight, she was enslaved, but educated by the Wheatleys in Boston.

Phyllis was a prodigious poet, and the Wheatleys took note, supporting her first publication "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral" before freeing her.

After Washington's appointment as army commander, she pinned the heroic poem "His Excellency General Washington."

It compelled Washington, a slave owner, to invite her to visit him.

We aren't sure if they ever met, but some scholars believe Phillis shifted Washington's attitude on race and slavery from who could enlist to the virtue of abolition.

Phillis would later be recognized as the poet laureate of the American Revolution for her support of American liberty and its leaders.