On this day 250 years ago the Newport Mercury in Rhode Island published the open letter condemning slavery that the formerly enslaved poet Phillis Wheatley had written to the Reverend Samson Occom, a member of the Mohegan tribe of Native Americans, who was similarly preaching abolition. The open letter had been published previously and I have already blogged on the anniversary of an earlier publication of the letter.
But Phillis Wheatley’s stirring words are worth repeating. They illustrate that the demand for freedom for African Americans and Native Americans was also a product of the Revolution that started 250 years ago, even if it has taken much longer to achieve than Independence from Great Britain, and in no small part, remains a work in process today:
“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 . . . the same Principle lives in us. . . . I desire . . . 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 for the exercise of oppressive Power over others agree, I humbly think it does not require the Penetration of a Philosopher to determine.”
Source:
On This Day In The Revolution 