Olaudah Equiano

Olaudah Equiano was one of the most influential figures in the abolitionist movement who 

fought to raise awareness of the horrors of slavery.

Born in around 1745, he was stolen by slavers from his home in Nigeria aged 11, eventually 

buying his freedom decades later for the price of around £5,000 in today's currency.

Enslaved as a child in Africa, he was taken to the Caribbean and sold as a slave to a Royal 

Navy officer. He was sold twice more but purchased his freedom in 1766.

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. 

Equiano married an English woman, Susannah Cullen, in 1792 and they had two daughters. As a   freeman, he worked with Granville Sharp and an abolitionist group called the Teston Circle at Barham   Court, near Maidstone. 

Before he died in 1797, 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 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.