Olaudah Equiano

Olaudah Equiano , known in his lifetime as Gustavus Vassa , was a prominent African in London, a freed slave who supported the British movement to end the slave trade. His autobiography, published in 1789 and attracting wide attention, was considered highly influential in gaining passage of the Slave Trade Act 1807, which ended the African trade for Britain and its colonies.

Equiano recounted an incident when an attempted kidnapping of children was thwarted by adults in his villages. When he was around the age of eleven, he and his sister were left alone to look after their familys compound, as was common when adults went out of the house for work. They were both kidnapped and taken far away from their hometown, separated, and sold to slave traders. After changing hands several times, Equiano met his sister again, but they were separated and he was taken over a large river to the coast, where he was held by European slave traders. He was transported with 244 other enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to Barbados in the West Indies. He and a few other slaves were sent on to the British colony of Virginia. Literary scholar Vincent Carretta argued in his 2005 biography of Equiano that the activist may have been born in colonial South Carolina rather than Africa based on Carrettas discovery of a 1759 parish baptismal record and a 1773 ships muster, both

Source: Wikipedia