1772. A young slave girl just ten years from being kidnapped from the West Africa of her birth is brought to trial by the forefathers of a nation-to-be in Boston. She is being tried before the a jury of the most eminent men in Boston, who all happen to be white. Phillis Wheatley's "crime": the God-given gift to compose poetry capable of touching the soul, words so brilliantly crafted as to be compared to England's Poet Laureate, Alexander Pope. Surely no mere slave could have written the best poetry produced in the colonies! Prosecuting the case the Lieutenant Governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay Colony, and defending the accused: no less a brilliant and with figure than John Hancock.

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