Britannica Sources used in this answer

How did early African American writers use the Declaration of Independence to argue for equal rights?

Created from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles.

Phillis Wheatley's first book of poetry — African American literature Frontispiece and title page of *Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral* (1773) by Phillis Wheatley, the first Black woman to become a poet of note in the United States. The portrait on which the frontispiece's engraving is based is often attributed to Scipio Moorhead, an Black artist and writer who, like Wheatley, was enslaved and living in Boston.

Early African American writers utilized the Declaration of Independence as a foundational tool to challenge the hypocrisy of a nation that proclaimed liberty while maintaining the institution of slavery.1

By invoking the document’s core assertion that "all men are created equal," these writers argued that the human rights claimed by white Americans must, by definition, be extended to Black Americans. This rhetorical strategy was essential to their mission of social justice, as it forced a confrontation between the nation's stated democratic ideals and the reality of systemic oppression.1

This argument was further amplified in later years by figures such as Frederick Douglass, whose famous speech, "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?," poignantly exposed the contradiction between the celebration of independence and the continued enslavement of African Americans. By grounding their demands in the nation's own founding principles, these authors effectively utilized the language of the American Revolution to advocate for the moral necessity of abolitionism and equal rights.21