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This coming Sunday, in official ceremonies, one of Boston's oldest schools will take on a new name.
The Horace Mann Middle School on Kearsage Road in Roxbury will be renamed for Phyllis Wheatley, one of Boston's 18th century black citizens.
Significant literature by black Americans about the black experience belongs largely to this century. However, in past centuries, individual blacks made important contributions to the literature of America. Phyllis Wheatley, a slave girl in Boston during the 1700s, was one such individual.
Phyllis Wheatley was a significant poet of her time and one of the best known blacks during the American Revolutionary War period.
She was brought to Boston on a slave ship from Senegal, West Africa in 1761: At eight years of age she was put on Boston's slave market and was purchased by a John Wheatley as a servant for his wife. At the Wheatley home the young...