Why Gates chose to speak about the life and trials of Phillis Wheatley

In his analysis of the controversy surrounding Phillis Wheatley’s poetry, Gates demonstrates that theoretical issues debated in the academy are indeed relevant to the everyday lives of Americans. Gates, chairman of the Department of African and African American Studies at Harvard University, is a prominent intellectual. In his preface he states that the National Endowment for the Humanities, in honoring him by inviting him to lecture, acknowledges the importance of African American studies in the intellectual life of the United States.