A ny evaluation of Phillis Wheatley must consider her status as a slave.-*-^-Wheatley was one of only three Americans who were able to publish poetry and prose while they were still in bondage.(The other two were Jupiter Hammon [1711-179?] and George Moses Horton [1797-1883].) Speaking out against one's" owners" or the society which either con doned or ignored the owners' action? while held in their joint" posses sion"? was a monumental task. Most of Wheatley's critics have not considered these factors when assessing her work. Nor have many mod ern critics of Black American literature been kind to Wheatley. James Weldon Johnson, Benjamin Brawley, Darwin Turner, Benjamin Mays, and J. Saunders Redding have castigated her as an unfeeling woman foolishly immersed in colonial refinements, oblivious to her own status as a slave and to that of her African peers. A recent and more sting ing comment is from Eleanor Smith, who put Wheatley among those" Blacks who are taught to think white and to divorce themselves from who they are. When they direct their energies, be they creative or other wise, towards Whites, they are never consciously contributing to their own liberation or the liberation of Black people. Phillis Wheatley did not help herself by following all the dictates of Whites nor did she contribute to the well-being of black people of her time"(407). Although Arthur P. Davis, Lynn Matson, John C. Shields, William H. Robinson, Jr., Mukh tar Ali Isani and others have recently begun to correct this one-sided picture by showing that Wheatley was not unmindful of racial concerns, their works still overlook biblical terminology and its implications for slavery.