Presented here is an analysis by James Weldon Johnson of Phillis Wheatley’s poetry. She was one of the first women to be published in colonial America, and the first person in the U.S. to have a book of poetry published while enslaved.

James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938) was a writer, educator, poet, diplomat, and civil rights activist. He helmed the NAACP from 1920 to 1930. He was a significant figure in the Harlem Renaissance movement, or as it was then called, The New Negro movement.

The Book of American Negro Poetry (1922), chosen and edited by Johnson, was one of a handful of significant anthologies of Black literature to be published in the 1920s. The segment following, in which he provides and analysis of Phillis Wheatley’s poetry, is a portion of the Johnson’s Preface to this collection. It is in the public domain.

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