Olaudah Equiano

Olaudah Equiano

Honored in 2002, Olaudah Equiano (c.1745-1797) was born in the Eboe region of the Kingdom of Benin in what is now Nigeria. He was kidnapped as a child and sold into slavery in the Caribbean as a slave to a Royal Navy officer. He was known for most of his life as Gustavus Vassa. He was sold twice more but purchased his freedom in 1766.

After gaining his freedom, he made a life as a seaman, traveling around the world, from the Mediterranean to the North Pole.

As a freedman in London, Equiano supported the British abolitionist movement. He was part of the Sons of Africa, an abolitionist group composed of Africans living in Britain, and he was active among leaders of the anti-slave trade movement in the 1780s. He published his autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789), which depicted the horrors of slavery. It went through nine editions in his lifetime and helped gain the passage of the British Slave Trade Act 1807, which abolished the slave trade.

Since the late 20th century, when his autobiography was published in a new edition, he has been increasingly studied by a range of scholars, including from his homeland.