Exclusive: 'In Search of Phillis Wheatley Peters' Director Talk & Screening

Join us for a special screening and conversation with the filmmakers as part of the Museum of Old Newbury’s MA250 series.

In September, the Museum of Old Newbury hosted Askew Pictures, a dynamic international documentary film team led by Leslie Askew, producer and director of projects for SBS, National Geographic, Al Jazeera, CBS, BET, PBS, History Channel, and CNN (including the award-winning CNN Heroes). During that visit, Askew interviewed Newburyport resident Kabria Baumgartner, who appears throughout the film.

After the film’s premiere to a packed house at the Museum of African American History in Boston, we were thrilled when Askew Pictures offered to bring the film to Newburyport for a screening in our museum. We’re proud to feature this program as part of MA250 programming, as the film highlights Phillis Wheatley’s belief in the Revolutionary cause and the era’s urgent, unfinished promises of liberty.

Tickets are limited. Please reserve yours soon. We hope you’ll join us for a memorable evening.

6:30 PM: Refreshments served
7:00 PM: Film introduction and screening
Following the film: Q&A with director Leslie Askew

‘In Search of Phillis Wheatley Peters’ reclaims the life of Phillis Wheatley Peters, America’s first published Black poet, by illuminating a largely overlooked chapter of her story, her marriage to John Peters and the radical choices she made in pursuit of autonomy, dignity, and love.

Drawing on groundbreaking archival research by historian Dr. Cornelia Dayton, the film brings newly uncovered documents and historical evidence to life, challenging long-standing narratives that have framed Phillis primarily as an enslaved literary prodigy shaped by others. Instead, the film places her at the center of her own story, an abolitionist actively navigating the political, economic, and racial constraints of Revolutionary-era Boston.

At the heart of the film is Phillis’s 1778 marriage to John Peters, a free Black man, entrepreneur, and advocate who shared her belief in self-determination. Together, they confronted poverty, racism, and legal precarity in a society that offered little protection to Black families in the aftermath of the American Revolution. Their partnership emerges not as a footnote, but as a deliberate and meaningful act, one that reshapes how we understand Phillis’s later life and work.

Featuring insights from leading scholars, poets, and cultural historians, ‘In Search of Phillis Wheatley Peters’ reframes Phillis not only as a foundational literary figure, but as a revolutionary woman whose choices, intellectual, emotional, and political, continue to resonate today.

In partnership with Friends of William Lloyd Garrison.

Funded in part by the Massachusetts Office of Travel and Tourism.

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